In 2005, a 16-year-old hit his pregnant girlfriend with a baseball bat to induce an abortion in Michigan, where parental consent is required to obtain this service safely. Another 17-year-old in Indiana died after giving herself an unsafe abortion, not having the courage to ask her parents for consent. Contrary to common expectations, these women weren’t necessarily unaware of the dangers of trying to abort their fetuses on their own. What then forced them to seek this risky procedure? Their state laws.
I have seen arguments recently about mandating parental permission to seek abortions- a law already passed and practiced in states like Texas, Oklahoma and Utah. Proponents of the law argue that these provisions will reduce the burden on #PregnantTeens to seek appropriate treatment and ensure that they will be making an informed decision.
The reality, however, is often strikingly different. Establishing this additional legal barrier has not only increased the risks of encouraging unsafe abortion practices but has also created undue delays in the time teens take to seek appropriate services, increasing the chances of adverse outcomes.
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine validates this, confirming that teens who required parental consent to get an abortion were 34% more likely to go for the procedure in the much riskier second trimester than those who did not. Additionally, it has increased the number of teens opting to go out of state for abortions. The average distance that a minor needs to travel for a confidential abortion was 454 miles in 2015, a whopping ninefold increase from 55 miles in 1992. Clearly, the law is having the exact opposite effect of the support and the safety that it is claiming to provide.
Even more dangerous is the baseless assumption behind these laws that all teens have access to and opportunities to have a healthy discussion about pregnancy or sex with their parents. A study by the Guttmacher Institute found that 39% of minors did not inform their parents about being pregnant, irrespective of the laws.
Many of these girls came from dysfunctional, broken, or abusive families where no law could encourage healthy discussions. Instead, it is much more likely that it added to the intense psychological burden these young girls were already experiencing, especially for young women of color and immigrants.
The core of the issue that we must not miss in this discussion ultimately comes down to the fundamental principles of bodily autonomy, that women should be able to decide what happens with their bodies irrespective of their parents’ or their state’s political, religious, or personal inclinations. This law does not reduce teenage pregnancies nor prevent young women from seeking abortion services.
We do not need any more hurdles imposed upon young women's bodies and fundamental reproductive rights without any evidence of getting them any real benefits. As a state, I believe we need to focus on addressing the root issues of poor sex education, lack of access to contraception services, and the rising trends of teenage pregnancies.
Our experiences have repeatedly shown that attempts to control young women in the disguise of laws and policy is never the real solution. Therefore, Washington minors should be able to consent to an abortion without parental permission.
