Our View-Plight of teen women surreal with anti-abortion law

We measure autumn’s arrival in most parts of the United States when tree leaves change color, it starts getting dark earlier, school starts and the weather gets a bit cooler.

California has an added bonus to signal the fall season. We get delivered a host of political initiatives from citizens trying to have their pet laws placed on the November ballot.

True to form, proponents for an initiative to chip away at women’s rights are gathering signatures for a proposed amendment to the California Constitution that would require teenage women to give 48-hour parental notification that they intend to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

Actually, Proposition 4 has nearly turned into an annual dance. For the third time in the past four years some wealthy older guy, 61-year-old Jim Holman of San Diego, is spending mega dollars in an attempt to dictate how young women make decisions concerning their bodies.

Holman has up-to-date spent about $4.6 million, on this cause and is joined in this trip to the ballroom floor with California winemaker Don Sebastiani. If Holman’s initiative makes the ballot, it will break an unsavory record, set in 1914, for failed bill attempts within a four-year period. Both men spent big bucks on similar legislative attempts in 2005 and 2006.

This year’s installment of the push to force teenagers to notify parents has an added option, though. This one would allow teens — under penalty of perjury — that say they are victims of parental abuse to notify another adult, like a grandmother, aunt or uncle that they were getting an abortion.

The problem with the new gimmick is that an official report would be made that parental abuse was occurring and would thereby spawn an investigation. The girl “has to accuse a parent of abusing her in the past and sign a written statement saying she fears physical, sexual or severe emotional abuse in the future,” According to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The fear is all too genuine that a teenager would not want to face the consequences of reporting parental abuse under those circumstances. What about the girls who are already fearful of the bureaucracy? Being forced to enter a legal quagmire might prompt them to either seek an illegal in-state abortion, or flee to other states where they could obtain one.

The seemingly well-intentioned proposition is promoted as aiming to reduce the numbers of teen pregnancies and abortions in the state. Holman already is on record for his anti-abortion views, having been arrested for protesting in front of an abortion clinic, according the San Diego Union-Tribune. This is merely another attempt by Holman and his cronies to hack away at Roe v. Wade and is built on false reasoning.

According to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, teen pregnancies and abortions are below the national average. Adolescent pregnancies dropped by “46% between 1992 and 2000: from 102 to 55 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 17.” At the same time, abortions fell by 50 percent in the same age group.

The report adds “the teen birth rate fell by 54 percent between 1992 and 2005, the first year Holman tried to manipulate state law.

The study attributes California’s success to increased sex education, teen access to contraceptives and medical treatment that doesn’t require parental notification. Included in the study is the fact that the parents of 79 percent of California women ages 14 to 17 are aware of their daughters’ sexual activity.

Bluntly interpreted, Proposition 4 is an enormous step backward for women’s health rights and would only serve to return teenage girls back to a time of back alley abortions.