Parental notification alerts the parent that something is wrong. Perhaps they have a boyfriend you don’t know about. Perhaps there was a rape. Perhaps there is a statutory rapist present.

Parental notification also lets parents force young women to bear children, against their will. To ignore this is disingenuous.

And if a teen is intent on concealing a crime from their parents, they are likely to conceal it from the judge too.

But there will also be those cases where a young woman feels she can trust neither parents nor a judge. Then the obstacles you’ve placed in her path may cause her to seek a back-alley abortion instead.

And your arguments regarding abuse from fathers doesn’t wash, since with good laws, young girls can seek an alternative to parental notification by going to a court.

As if the shame that society places upon women who seek abortions weren’t enough, now you want them to stand before judges and beg for the right to bodily autonomy. Yeah, I’m sure that won’t mean a spike in back-alley abortions and suicide attempts.

And another thing. You’ve completely ignored the problem of forced birth. Apparently you just don’t care about that. Judges can’t prevent parents from choosing that route. If you have parental notification, you absolutely will have some number of forced births (hundreds or thousands every year, if you’re honest). You think this is acceptable.

are kids qualified to vote? If not, how can we consider them qualified to make choices without their parents present.

I’ll just quote SuzanneM, since you dishonestly ignored her when she already smacked down this argument: “Abortion is a teen making a decision about her own body. Voting is her making a decision that affects way more than just her body.”

Rather different situations, with rather different results. An honest person can see a place for giving teens one choice and not the other. Because … [drumroll] … they’re different.

It’s easy when it’s spelled out for you over and over and over again, isn’t it? Well, I’d hope so, for your sake.

By trying to protect against the bad parent AND bad judge you are going after a problem that is much more rare than just worrying about bad parents alone.

However rare, still not non-existent. You know this is a problem, and you want us to gloss over it because you say it’s small. But the truth is you’re willing to sacrifice some young women on that altar, to serve your political ends.

How many will be denied access to abortion and then turned over to abusive parents who will beat them? More than zero. You think this is acceptable.

How many will be forced to give birth to children they do not want? More than zero. You like it that way, yes?

For the record, I do not have children. I do not hate children; they are simply not a part of my world. I made the decision not to reproduce instead of just mindlessly contributing to overpopulation and its attendant miseries.
Get used to it—the childfree are not going away simply because you have problems with us. The world does NOT revolve around you and your children! So sorry that you feel we have no right to post here—NOT!!

For the record, I do not have children. I do not hate children; they are simply not a part of my world. I made the decision not to reproduce instead of just mindlessly contributing to overpopulation and its attendant miseries.
Get used to it—the childfree are not going away simply because you have problems with us. The world does NOT revolve around you and your children! So sorry that you feel we have no right to post here—NOT!!

Oh, I’m sure you do! You probably have a whole list of people who you think shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Thanks again Dana for demonstrating yet again that everything we think about voter suppression and Republicans is true…

Interesting idea. I do hope however if it happens that children are liable for tax. After all if there’s no taxation without representation then the opposite should also hold true. No representation without taxation. Especially as children are the demographic get the most public funded support already. Adult rights should only come with adult responsibilities.

Well, I certainly like the idea of saying that people on welfare couldn’t vote!

I’m not talking about twelve-year-olds or sixteen-year-olds, I’m talking about three-year-olds. I agree that all of the suggested ages are arbitrary, but at a certain point you’re really not enfranchising anyone, you’re just allowing them to be used. A twelve-year-old has generally been exposed to the world long enough to realize that she can think independently and make choices for herself. She’ll be able to understand the concept of a representative democracy and figure out which issues matter to her. It really doesn’t matter if she makes the “wrong” choice or votes just like her parents, because she was (ideally!) given the chance to explore her options, learn about the political process and make her own mistakes. But a three-year-old? A three-year-old has a mind of her own, but she most likely hasn’t been exposed to any ideas besides her parents’. I assure you that very few people, liberal or conservative, will take the time to objectively explain the process/issues to her, or tell her that she doesn’t have to vote for mommy and daddy’s favorite candidate, much less vote at all. Furthermore, these ideas may be temporarily beyond her comprehension — and definitely beyond the comprehension of a two-year-old or one-year-old — which effectively reduces her to little more than mommy/daddy’s second vote. I — and possibly you — would be pretty pissed off to find out that my parents used me as a tool to further their political agenda, whether I later agreed with the vote or not.

Basically, giving very young children the vote — which this guy is proposing — would only oppress them further. Young children in general are unaware of their rights, and are easy to exploit. Hell, even if we lived in a perfect world in which parents patiently and nonsubjectively explained reproductive rights or economic policy to their children, we’d still need restrictions to keep people from using their children. The thing about fetus voting rights sounded ridiculous, but you know there’d be a couple of assholes going for it. I’m sure that as feminists, we all agree that taking advantage of someone not in a position to defend oneself is wrong.