Coming Next: The Stamping Out Driving Other Kids To Soccer Practice Act
By James Joyner on the latest round of federal abortion regulation:
Indeed, it’s hard to fathom a reason to oppose this legislation. Whatever one’s views on abortion, surely kidnapping to accomplish it is a bad thing.
The thing is, kidnapping generally refers to taking someone without their consent. In this ever-changing world, it’s good to know there are things we can count on, and pro-lifers assuming that women who obtain abortions are entirely devoid of agency is certainly one of them. As for the larger question, it’s actually very easy to oppose this legislation, given that parental consent laws don’t actually accomplish anything (at least if one charitably assumes that the point it to encourage communication within stable families as oppose to putting as many arbitrary obstacles in the path of poor women trying to get abortions as possible.)
Ah, but don’t these laws contain bypass options for young women in the worst family situations? As Helena Silverstein (with Wayne Fishman) again remind us in a must-read article, being generally designed and implemented by people who are hostile to reproductive freedom, they frequently don’t work:
The palatability of involvement mandates rests on the supposed effectiveness of the judicial bypass process. But the actual functioning of this process does not come close to resembling what is imagined. For example, research we conducted in Alabama and Tennessee shows that nearly half of the courts charged with implementing the bypass mechanism were unprepared to do so. In an even worse showing, more than two thirds of Pennsylvania courts were unprepared.
The reasons for these implementation failures vary. Courts often are ignorant of their responsibility. Sometimes judges refuse to hear bypass petitions on ideological grounds. Other times, court personnel are unavailable. Courts occasionally seek to convince minors that abortion is morally wrong. Whatever the reason, there is in fact an enormous disconnect between what parental involvement laws promise and what implementers of such laws deliver.
Thus, the CCPA bolsters laws that don’t work and, in doing so, potentially endangers minors who have legitimate reasons to avoid parental involvement and who are poorly served by states’ false promises. If the CCPA becomes law, some teens will continue to go out of state for abortions, either subjecting a trusted relative or friend to the risk of a jail term or making the trip alone. Others will face the prospect of being forced by a parent to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.
If the federal government really cared about protecting vulnerable teens, it would pursue prosecutions under the CCPA only after states have proven the reliability of their bypass processes. But, of course, this isn’t going to happen — the primary impetus behind the CCPA and state involvement mandates has little actually to do with protecting minors’ interests, pious rhetoric notwithstanding.
Opposing these laws isn’t just possible; it’s necessary.