This is pretty interesting stuff. According to analysis by The New York Times, parental notification and consent laws don’t seem to have much of an an impact on abortion rates.
The analysis, which looked at six states that introduced parental involvement laws in the last decade and is believed to be the first study to include data from years after 1999, found instead a scattering of divergent trends.For instance, in Tennessee, the abortion rate went down when a federal court suspended a parental consent requirement, then rose when the law went back into effect. In Texas, the rate fell after a notification law went into effect, but not as fast as it did in the years before the law. In Virginia, the rate barely moved when the state introduced a notification law in 1998, but fell after the requirement was changed to parental consent in 2003.
The resulting numbers showed that these laws had no real impact on the number of minors who got pregnant or the number that had a abortions. This news probably won’t be welcomed by anti-choicers, who argue that consent and notification laws are a big part of reducing the number of abortions.
The only thing we have to watch out for is anti-choicers using this news as a way to argue that consent laws aren’t harmful to teens. (See, they don’t make a real difference anyway, so let’s make sure parents are involved rather than not!) The NY Times argues that a main reason behind these laws having little impact is that most teens tell their parents about their pregnancy.
But for teens who have abusive parents or who are victims of incest, these laws are straight up dangerous--we can’t let that be forgotten.
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This is the expected result, as I understand it. IIRC, this was even used as an argument in passing these, that it wouldn't affect very many people. The correct way to measure the results of this is to follow up on incidents where the teen requested nondisclosure, and the prevention of that resulted in abuse or coercion.
Sadly, that would be difficult even if you could get someone in power interested in the results.
my first thought on this was that it would be very much a victory for anti-choicers. there's a much stronger argument for them to say "if it doesn't matter anyway, we'd like to have the safeguard there" than for our "these laws are dangerous because of abusive or even just non-understanding parents, even though nothing changes when we have them."
I believe we need to look at the parental notification and consent numbers in relation to increases in the teenage suicide rates, as well as hospital admissions for abuse and suicide attempts.
"anti-choicers using this news as a way to argue that consent laws aren’t harmful to teens."
That's a winner for choice. Young women notifying their parents proves that they're getting abortions because they're in deep trouble and an abortion is the only way out. If anti-choicers want to accept that premise then that leaves them arguing within our frame of reference and on our terms.
And as you said, anti-choicers don't want to admit that incest or parental child abuse exists.
In my experience working with an Ob/Gyn when abortion was first legalized in California, it was parents who were most concerned about abortion being available for their pregnant teenage daughters. (And, of course, for their teenage sons -- in case after case, the parents of teenage fathers most strenously insisted that their sons should not/would not be burdened with too early marriage or child support.) The girls themselves often had very romantic hopes for marriage and happily-ever-after.
For that reason it never occurred to me that anti-abortion activists were counting on parental notification to somehow decrease the number of abortions.
If they honestly did expect it to do so, that fact says something about how naive they are in terms of the political realities of abortion.
Middle class parents (and voters) of course express disapproval of abortion in the abstract. But, given the economic consequences of too early marriage and/or child bearing, they want abortion as a fail-safe when their own teenage children become pregnant or impregnate their girl friends.
esmense: Well said!