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What I Wish He Would Say

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M. LeBlanc finds Obama using some wishy-washy rhetoric about parental involvement laws. I do think her headline is a little unfair; the closest to an outright endorsement is “possibly for extremely young teens, i.e., 12- or 13-year-olds.” This is pretty silly — on the question of whether public policy should be designed to use state coercion to produce more 12-year old mothers, I vote “no” — but the statement is both equivocal and doesn’t reflect any legislation actually likely to be passed. Discussing the need for bypass provisions reminds me of the bit in Ball Four where the general manager tells a player with pride that the team will generously agree to raise his salary to the league minimum; the Supreme Court has effectively required bypass provisions already. But bringing it up is a dodge, not an actual endorsement of legislation. Like Clinton, his rhetoric is evasive but unlikely to result in support for any actual legislation; this isn’t my optimal position but I can live with it.

I know there are political realities here; these laws, while awful public policy, are also very popular. But I wish Obama, Clinton and other pro-choice Democrats when possible would answer the question this way:

“Of course, the best situation is for a pregnant young woman to discuss the situation with loved ones she can trust and who will give her sound advice. But the problem is that young women in that position are very likely to do so without needing to get the state involved. And by using state coercion you also pull into the net young women in dysfunctional family relationships who have very good reasons not to share their thoughts and decision with. In other words, when they would do the most good the regulations are superfluous, and when they’re most necessary they’re likely to lead to an increase in physical and emotional abuse rather than lead to a better decision-making process. I can understand the goal here, but legislation just isn’t a good way of achieving it.

I know that one way around this dilemma the Supreme Court has embraced is to allow a bypass for young women in difficult family situations. That might sound good on paper, but in practice it just doesn’t work. The young women must likely to need to apply for a bypass are usually the least well-positioned to obtain one, and determinations about who should be granted one are inevitably made according to arbitrary standards applied by judges who may be very hostile to reproductive rights. We should keep the state out of family affairs in this instance. And we should also focus on policies, like rational sex ed. and access to contraceptives, that might reduce teenage pregnancies rather than using state coercion to create more 13-year old mothers. We should increase support services for young women who choose to give birth too. But parental involvement requirements just aren’t a good means of pursuing any worthwhile objective.”

Someday, maybe we can get something like that in a questionnaire from a national politician…

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