Life: It’s the Period Before You’re Born and After You’re Vegetative
By s.z. notes that uber-wingnut Randall Terry is now putting pressure on Jeb Bush in the case of the 13 year-old girl in Florida who is being coerced by the state to maintain her pregnancy. I’m sure Sean Hannity is getting is ticket to Florida as we speak. Randall does do us the favor of summarizing pro-life logic nicely:
If she is permitted or pressured into having this abortion, it will be one more mountain of guilt that she will have to carry on her young back. This will be a horrifying, defining moment for her, which will bring no long term relief or solutions to her turbulent life, and will only compound her grief and the emotional crises she will face in the future.
Yes, when making difficult decisions such as this the most important thing is that 1)the young woman’s needs and thoughts as she sees them be given no weight, and 2)these choices should be made by people with no ability whatsoever to assess them, preferably a marginally sane terrorist sympathizer.
The thing is, though, that this case is a logical application of the underlying basis of parental consent laws; it just happens in this case that the guardian is the state. But once you’ve decided that a young woman forfeits her rights over this most important and intimate decision, the logic applies just as easily to situations where the state is acting as a legal guardian. It also starkly demonstrates that these laws perversely only matter in contexts where young women most need legal protection. Despite the number of people who fetishize them as an acceptable compromise, no pro-choicer should do anything but staunchly oppose parental consent and notice laws, without exception.