Responding to Guttmacher’s Attack
by Michael New
December 19, 2008
Earlier this month, the Alan Guttmacher Institute attacked my September Family Research Council study which documented the effectiveness of state level pro-life parental involvement laws. They claim that my methodology is ‘faulty.’ They also argue that forcing minors to reveal their pregnancy to their parents places teens at risk of abuse.
In my response I document three studies in peer reviewed journals that show that the overall incidence of abortion among minors declines after the passage of parental involvement laws. Additionally,parental involvement laws protect minors in other ways. Parental involvement laws make it more difficult for child predators to use abortions to cover up their criminal behavior.
Furthermore, many minors seeking abortions without their parents’ knowledge are at risk because they are unaware of their own medical history. In my response, I report cases where minors undergoing abortions died because they experienced an allergic reaction to the anesthesia.
It is for these reasons and others that many district attorneys, law enforcement officials, and groups representing crisis pregnancy centers support pro-life parental involvement laws. Here is a link to my full response [PDF].
Family Research Council is a 501c(3) non-profit organization. If this post has been helpful to you, please consider a gift to help us continue to advance Faith, Family, and Freedom.
Comments
Parents definitely need to be involved in their children’s decisions. Especially with regard to things like sexuality
“If a minor is mature enough to seek and [sic]abortion . . .”
Talk about begging the question. Without parental involvement, who gets to make that call? Thats right, the “mature” teenager who just got pregnant. Have you ever met a teenager that thought they were not mature enough to make a decision without their parents? The whole point of the laws is that a teenager is poorly equiped to make these decisions and the parents need to be involved in this process.
I also was amazed by your reference to “family abuse or interference” as if trying to prevent an abortion is on par with abuse. I will never understand the glorification of death by the Left.
If I’m gonna be able to veto my daughter’s abortion, I should sure as heck be able to veto her growing her pregnancy and giving birth. MUCH more dangerous and life-changing for her, and I’m the one who’s gonna end up paying for the kid.
Are you pro-parental-consent people gonna be consistant? Then you need to support my right to FORCE an abortion on my minor daughter.
I’m loathe to say anything rude about RCharles, but s/he appears not to be able to comprehend the written word. The study documents cases where children died because they didn’t know they were allergic to anesthetic.
It’s absurd to say that for every medical procedure informed consent is critical – except in the case of children receiving abortions.
Children by definition cannot give informed consent. I don’t think I’m making an earth-shattering observation.
Further, New also makes clear that allowing children to bypass parental notification laws enables abusers to cover thier tracks by helping raped children get an abortion.
Yet RCharles completely ignores these results wile presenting no counterclaim. Why wouldn’t we want the people who love a child the most to know that the child has been rapd? What POSSIBLE benefit can come from excluding the people who would lay down thier lives for a child from this episode in a child’s life?
Does RCharles expect anyone to swallow the propaganda that mothers and fathers are abusing thier pregnant daughters in any meaningful percentage, or does s/he want us to believe that the miniscule numbers of irresponsible parents justify carving out this exception? Come on.
Of course, if abortion is merely the means to an end that consists of eliminating parental influence from children’s lives, to replace parents with state actors, then creating this exception makes perfect sense as a significant milestone towards that goal.
RCharles doesn’t acknowledge that 3 separate studies seem to verify New’s conclusion.
Apparently we are to assume that if someone wants to see abortion rates decrease, a study that shows they do is invalid because an author wanted to see abortions decrease.
Does New want to see abortion rates decrease? I hope so. But motivations are irrelevent ifhis math is sound.
Those motivations have no effect on the issue of whether children can give informed consent (they can’t); it has no effect on whether abusers can manipulate children to seek an abortion to hide a future DNA test (molesters are by definition manipulative people); his motiviation has no effect on whether rates go down or not.
The numbers seem to bear out that abortion rates go down when parents are involved. I personally think that’s good evidence for why parents should be involved, but I also think its critical that if my daughter is facing a medical procedure then the only two people on planet Earth who know her medical history should be involved in the decision making process.
Who in thier right mind would want my child to die just to ensure that she could abort her child?
The day abortion proponents argue that all informed consent laws should be discarded is the day that they have a consistent argument for eliminating parents from the informed consent process of an abortion.
Of course they would then be revealig thier true agenda, which would tend to deligitimize them in the eyes of most people.
Duh.
Judging by the Guttmacher Institute’s comments, and one of the comments above, I think I know what this response is lacking: the ad hominem attack.
Above all else, do whatever is necessary to cast your opponents in the worst light possible: suggest their inherent bias, insult their intelligence, and cast dispersion on their character. You could even make bigoted statements about their (perceived) religious beliefs, which has been working out quite nicely for the “No on Prop 8″ crowd.
It may not turn black into white, but at least it will win favor with the mainstream media.
“suggest their inherent bias,…”
So you’re saying that FRC does NOT have an “inherent bias” in any issue related to abortion? Give me a break.
By: RCharles | December 20, 2008 at 9:39 am
“In my response I document three studies in peer reviewed journals that show that the overall incidence of abortion among minors declines after the passage of parental involvement laws.”
Well, DUH! If you make it difficult for a minor to get an abortion they will get fewer abortions. And, of course, that is your goal, not to help the minor in any way but to prevent the abortion, damn the consequences.
If a minor is mature enough to seek and abortion and needs privacy due to potential family abuse or interference, there is no logical reason to force them into that abuse. Instead of just counting the number of abortions, I suggest you study the subsequent years of the minor’s life and the life of the child they were forced to create. If you find that more than half are in worse condition, e.g., abused, thrown out, living in poverty or on welfare, then your action is abusive intrusion in the life of each individual.
But you would rather quote the abortion count statistics, which are a given and prove nothing.
RCG