Girls need the right to confidential reproductive care
To enroll my daughter Miriam in kindergarten this fall I signed many official-looking forms to confirm her attachment to me. Now that school is in session, the paperwork continues: Her teacher sends home permission slips with regularity. One would think I owned her.
The issue of parental authority casts a long shadow over the ongoing abortion wars, with the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life recently taking gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton to task for conflicting statements about laws requiring minor girls seeking abortions to procure the consent of their parents. The MCCL calls Dayton "confused," an accurate description of any parent faced with a young daughter's unplanned pregnancy.
As a U.S. Senator, Dayton cosponsored the Freedom of Choice Act, which would essentially codify Roe vs. Wade into federal law, yet he says he supports Minnesota's parental notification law. I, too, suggest that Dayton make up his mind, this time in favor of eliminating barriers to reproductive freedom for all women, regardless of age.
Khalil Gibran wrote a passage on parenthood in The Prophet that begins: "Your children are not your children." It is a difficult truth for parents to grasp. "You can house their bodies but not their souls," Gibran continues, "for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams." Ouch.
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Minnesota law, however, views Miriam as my property. As the logic goes, parents are required to give permission for ear piercing, so why not an abortion? I'd have to sign a raft of forms to approve my daughter's tonsillectomy, so why not her abortion?
For starters, there is no stigma around the ear lobes or other body parts visible to all at Lake Nokomis in July. Tonsils don't sell motorcycles or light beer. Like it or not, American culture is simultaneously obsessed with, disgusted by and confused about human sexuality.
Contemplating our children as sexual beings feels creepy; we don't want to do it. Some take their unease to unrealistic extremes, refusing to address the need for comprehensive, science-based sexual education in homes and in schools. Voters in Delaware support a Republican candidate, Christine O'Donnell, who thinks even masturbation is a sin, yet a Guttmacher Institute report released last January found her state to have one of the highest teenage abortion rates in the country.
We ignore teenage sexuality at our peril. Here at home, the rates of sexually transmitted infections are rising at an alarming rate; Minnesota Department of Health statistics show that rates of HIV infection rose by 13 percent in 2009. The "true love waits" message isn't working; neither is ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away.
Would I want know if my daughter wanted an abortion? Of course. Every parenting decision I make is guided by my desire to build trust and respect in our family. I would want to know about her abortion; I would want to know about her pregnancy; I would want to know that she was sexually active. Do I have the right to all of this information? No. I work to earn her trust, but I can't force her to give it to me.
Anti-abortion activists say that notification laws are especially necessary for parents to be informed about cases of rape and incest. I say that if the girl hasn't shared her trauma with her parents already, she probably has her reasons (shame and stigma remain a fact of life for sexual assault victims, which is why their cases are dramatically underreported). No law can force a trusting relationship that doesn't exist. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics supports this view, stating that "legislation mandating parental involvement does not achieve the intended benefit of promoting family communication, but it does increase the risk of harm to the adolescent by delaying access to appropriate medical care."
I respect Sen. Dayton, the father of two sons, for his support for the Freedom of Choice Act. I hope that he'll dedicate himself to the health and safety of our daughters, too.
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Shannon Drury, president of Minnesota NOW, is a writer, at-home parent and community activist. She writes a regular column for the Minnesota Women's Press and blogs at theradicalhousewife.com. She is a source in MPR's Public Insight Network.
