Senate Approves Teen Endangerment Act

Unfortunately, the Senate today passed the so-called Child Custody Protection Act, which makes it a crime to take a pregnant girl across state lines for an abortion without her parents' knowledge.

Struggling to defend their majority this election year, Republican sponsors said the bill supports what a majority of the public believes: that a parent's right to know takes precedence over a young woman's right to have an abortion. But of course.

"Congress ought to have higher priorities than turning grandparents into criminals," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. WORD.

Significant differences exist between the Senate bill and a measure passed by the House last year, the "Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act".

Unlike the Senate bill, the House measure sets out a national parental notification law. It would require a physician who knowingly performs or induces an abortion on a minor who is a resident of another state to provide notice of at least 24 hours to a parent of the minor before ending the pregnancy.

"If we do nothing about teen pregnancy yet pass this punitive bill, then it proves that this (bill) is only a political charade and not a serious effort to combat the problem," Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. said.

These parental involvement laws are a disgrace. They also do nothing to prevent or even reduce the number of a bortions, as found by this analysis by The New York Times. Studies also show that 90% of teens inform at least one parent. This law essentially poses dangerous situations for the remining 10% of girls that do not have healthy, conducive environments. The government can not mandate good communication within families!!! The implications of bills like these are enormous, with the ending always the same: Desperate girls taking matters into their own hands.

Examples to follow:

• A 19-year-old Lufkin, Texas, teenager on Monday was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison for repeatedly stepping on the abdomen of his 17-year-old girlfriend in an effort to help her terminate her twin pregnancy, the Lufkin Daily News reports. The case is expected to be a landmark test of the state's fetal protection law (Cook, SB 319). The law, which Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed in June 2003, defines a fetus as an individual "at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth" and allows charges to be filed on behalf of a fetus that is terminated in an accident or crime. The girl involved in the case -- Erica Basoria -- had attempted to terminate her four-month pregnancy by hitting herself and later asked Gerardo Flores to step on her abdomen to try to cause a miscarriage. Basoria cannot be charged for terminating her own pregnancy under the fetal protection law because it might impinge on her legal right to an abortion.

• A 17-year-old Macomb County, Mich., boy who is charged with a felony under the state's Prenatal Protection Act for helping end his girlfriend's pregnancy by hitting her in the abdomen with a baseball bat cannot use his girlfriend's consent to the termination as a defense, Macomb County Circuit Judge Matthew Switalski ruled on Thursday, the Detroit Free Press reports. The girl -- who was six months pregnant at the time and subsequently gave birth to a stillborn infant -- had her boyfriend hit her repeatedly with a 22-inch souvenir bat over a two-week period in an attempt to terminate the pregnancy. However, under Michigan law, a person who intentionally harms a pregnant woman is criminally liable, but an act committed by the pregnant individual cannot be prosecuted. Switalski ruled that the girl could not legally consent to ending the pregnancy because Michigan law requires that minors get parental consent or a judicial bypass before undergoing an abortion, according to the AP/Detroit Free Press.

Here is a wonderful article by the Center for American Progress about The Harm of Parental Involvement Laws.

And let's not forget that in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court said it was constitutional for individual states to restrict minors' abortion access. *puke* The federal legislation passed by the Senate today forces pro-choice states to abide by the restrictive laws passed by anti-choice legislatures in neighboring states. So much for letting individual states decide how to restrict abortion. Thanks.