Talking to Your Parents is Such a Burden
The extent to which the pro-choice, or as I like to refer to them as the pro-abortion lobby, will go to protect abortion rights knows no bounds. They view any conditions or restrictions to it's access as unacceptable. This is no longer the crowd of people who convinced America that it should be legal only in cases of incest and rape. Today they are marketing abortion as a perfectly logical and normal form of birth control. They want abortions to be as accessible as a pack of condoms at the 711.
The laws regarding abortion, which is hailed by many as a right, vary so much from state to state that I have no idea of what is protected in what state. If the restrictions in your state are more severe than in another state, rest assured that there are forces hard at work trying to change that. The fight remains the same wherever, its just that the pro-abortion lobby has had more success in some states than others.
If you doubt that, consider what occurred last month in New Jersey. The New Jersey Supreme Court struck down a state law requiring minors to notify their parents before getting an abortion. Read that again, carefully. The law says nothing about consent, it only required that the parent be NOTIFIED. The Chief Justice said the parental-notification requirement placed an excessive burden on a girl's constitutional rights. That's right, in order to protect abortion rights at all costs in New Jersey, she has now decided that it is an undue burden to speak with your parents. That is an absolutely ridiculous statement!
She further goes on to say, "We acknowledge that the state has a substantial interest in preserving the family and protecting the rights of parents. When weighed against the right of a young woman to make the most personal and intimate decision whether to carry a child to term, however, the insubstantial connection between the notification requirement and the interests expressed by the state is not sufficient."
How can she possibly say such a thing! She should have just said that under no circumstance am I going to allow the legislative branch of this state to pass any laws that restrict access to abortions. That is a more accurate statement. This is a clear case of the abortion lobby using the judicial branch to bypass the legislative process in order to advance their agenda. This is a clear case of the judge using her judicial powers to overstep her bounds to control the legislative process. The grounds that she stated in support of their decision are absurd. This ruling is nothing more than a backwards way of her writing the laws herself.
Her decision is based on two points. 1) Parental-notification requirements place an excessive burden on a girl's constitutional rights. 2) When weighed against the right of a young woman to make the most personal and intimate decisions regarding her own body, however, the insubstantial connection between the notification requirement and the interests expressed by the state is not sufficient.
I think that it is an accurate statement to say that parental notification is a much lesser extreme than parental consent. So any sort of requirements calling for parental consent must me somewhere beyond an excessive burden on a girl's constitutional rights. Then why hasn't she struck down any school policies requiring parental permission before a student participates in school funded athletics? Then why hasn't she struck down any insurance policies, or hospital policies, or school policies that require parental consent before any sort of non-emergency medical procedures are performed? Then why hasn't she struck down any laws, ordinances, or statutes that require parental permission before a young girl who hasn't reached the age of consent can be legally married? The answer she would most likely give is that in those cases, the connection between parental notification and the interests expressed by the state are either sufficient to justify those actions or that they are not constitutional issues. I am here to say that I disagree with anyone who would honestly think for a minute that she made her ruling based on that premise. It seems to me that the interests of the state are only sufficient when they don't contradict with her apparent belief that abortions should be unrestricted in all cases.
Generally speaking, minors are not granted total access to the rights guaranteed by the constitution because the state feels it has an interest in protecting society and the minors from themselves before they reach the age of accountability. Various state and federal laws are already on the books that either place an excessive burden on some of their constitutional rights or even completely deny them those rights. The second amendment is just one example of a constitutional right that the state feels is in its best interests to deny to minors. Moving past constitutional law, we see that most cities and states have laws that restrict a young girl's ability to make personal decisions with regards to her body. Tattooing is just one example of this. A young girl cannot get a tattoo before the age of eighteen. Then why when it comes to parental notification, in regards to abortions, that it suddenly becomes inappropriate for the state to place any burden on the free exercise of that young girls rights?
The answer is simple. The pro-abortion movement has forced us to deal with the abortion issue separately from essentially everything else. They don't want us to associate what they love to call reproductive rights with any other rights or laws in regards to a persons body. Only then can they convince people that it is ok for a parent to have authority over their young daughter's body, except in the case of abortion. They don't want us to associate what they love to call terminating an unwanted pregnancy with abandoning an unwanted new born in a trash can at the prom. Only then can they convince people that abortion is nothing like killing a little baby. They don't want us to associate what they love to call a choice with any other choice to stop life such as the choice to murder or to euthinize another. Only then can they convince us that a baby is not legally alive until it is fully removed from it's mother's body.
The decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court to strike down the parental notification law is just one example of how the pro-abortion lobby is fighting tooth and nail to block all legislation that may in any way hinder the free practice of aborting babies. Don't underestimate to just what extent they will go to defend abortion. In New Jersey, they have used the judicial branch to overrule what the people have instructed their legislators to do. In New Jersey, the pro-abortion lobby has used the state government to take away your right as a parent to teach your children that abortions are wrong by removing the parent's ability to enforce that lesson. If they can do it in New Jersey, they can do it anywhere.
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