Promoted by Steven D. The War on Privacy continues . . .
The Senate cast its vote yesterday, passing another bill of Orwellian name: The Child Custody Protection Act. 9 Democrats crossed over and voted for this bill with the Republican majority. 4 Republicans voted against this bill.
The bill makes it a federal crime for any adult other than a parent to help a teen cross state lines to get abortion services, unless parents have given their explicit permission. It is another “victory” in the long-term strategy to end women’s choice about their bodies by restricting abortion at the so-called margins. In the name of protecting parental rights and child health by insisting that parents provide permission, it promised fines and jail time for grandmothers, aunts, mentors, and other persons who help desperate teens.
All that in the name of involving parents in their children’s health decisions. That’s a laudable goal – good health for teens – but this bill has little to do with promoting health and everything to do with adding restrictions to abortions. Soon we won’t be able to see Choice on the other side of that wall of incremental restrictions.
There is a dangerous reality for some teens, who live in unsafe or abusive homes. For another group of teens, a life-time of stated rejection of any daughter who gets pregnant offers similar dread, if not outright fear of physical harm. This bill has no safeguards for those young women, and may push them into a back-door abortion, or some foolish action to end their pregnancy (like the teen couple here in Michigan who attempted to end their unintended pregnancy by inducing abortion via baseball bat strikes to the girl’s abdomen), or birth of a child who is born with the stigma that the current political wingers seem to want to apply to young women who are sexually active. (I could write an entire rant about a person I heard recently suggesting that we need to go back to labeling children publicly as bastards, to insure higher moral standards. But I digress.)
I have seen no reliable documentation that there are hordes of easily led teens being persuaded into having abortions by dishonest and unscrupulous pro-abortion adults and friends. Most pregnant teens I’ve known have had their parents support for whatever decision they made about their pregnancy.
The small number who did not have parent support, said that they greatly feared their parents wrath. One child reluctantly told me her stepfather was the father of her child. This bill provides nothing to help kids in those situations. It will not produce good communication and loving care where it has not happened in the past.
Oh, I almost forgot. The Democrats who voted for this bill, just so you’ll remember them when they come up for election:
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Feinstein (D-CA) did not vote
With our illustrious Senate Democratic leader on this list, will there be any organized outcry against this bill? Of course not!
Pandering to their constituency again. We need a lot more organizers on the ground willing to work against legislation like this.
It seems that anytime there is a crisis in one direction, things slip through with unusual ease. Then again, Choice has been taken off the plate as a primary issue for the Democratic party – particularly at the margins, such as this bill.
I marvel at the ability of the Republicans to control the way this issue and others are defined publicly. It makes it so easy to avoid noticing where the road is ultimately leading: no acces to abortion, no access to birth control, with or without parent permission.
I swear the repubs could pass a bill prohibiting blacks from having children by adding the word ‘protection’ in it somewhere. Who can vote against protecting children – let alone leaving one behind?
DAMMIT DAMMMIT DAMMIT! (One of these days my head is just going to EXPLODE!)
There are plenty of small towns in the rural areas of my state that honestly have not moved far ahead of where they were back in my day. Where kids are STILL raised as I was, in totally sexist, misogynistic, far right coinservative, fundamentalist homes where abuse is rampant to this day, and kept carefully behind closed doors, just as it was in my day, when it was my turn to be be sexcually used by men in my own home, who felt they had the right to do this. Had I become pregant from that, I would have had NO where to turn. NO where. The church itself told me to go home and stop acting so “seductive”.
Now these inhuman monsters want to take away even the chance for any of these girls anywhere, to use a sympathtic adult, if they can even find one….to help them not have to live through the hell of carrying a rapists child, often a child of incest, to term??
I hate these people.
I HATE them, even though I’ve spend most of a lifeitme ridding myself of hate..I cannot help it.
I HATE these people.
I grew up in that same small town – in another state, another part of the country, most likely.
And of course, that small town is here in the metro area where I live also. The isolation and compartmentalization of sexual abuse keeps it hidden. The older the girl, the more likely she is to be blamed for being “seductive”, and of course, the more likely she is to be impregnated if she is sexually abused.
What I wouldn’t give to see websites like this in every city in America.
http://www.toronto.ca/health/sexualhealth/sh_abortion.htm
Those fucking bastards.
And as someone on MLW pointed out yesterday, since all of the states in between the coasts have parental notification laws, if a grandmother was trying to help her granddaughter get an abortion because, say, she was raped by her father, she would have to fly across the country to do so.
Total and complete fucking bullshit. I got an abortion, paid for by the province of ON when I was 16. No questions asked, except if I wanted counselling or birth control.
The blood of young women everywhere will be on their hands.
I would absolutely defy this law for a woman who needed an abortion. I forsee the US mking abortion impossible for most. I will gladly support, aid and abet any woman who needs an abortion. I don’t want to lose my own kid, but she is now at the age that she would understand. I will support a woman’s right to control her reproduction, even if it means jail.
This is why I would never vote for Casey. It is obvious from this vote that Dems do not care about a woman’s right to control her own body.
Even though i abhor violence, and have never in my life been a physially violent person, I believe the time has come when, if given the opportunity to be in a room alone with any law maker who voted for this, I would be totally capable of going straight for the jugular.
I think you should aim lower and tie something in a knot…not that I’m advocating violence, mind you.
Not to worry. Nurses are trained in doing even painful things very “gently”.
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
Salazar (D-CO)
So tell me again what a great Senator Bob Casey will be and how the democrats will always protect reproductive choice. Tell me why Reid is such a great ‘leadership’ choice.
Yeah. Right.
When pigs fly.
strategic minds of the dem party????? You must be a troll!
If rhat was the working definition, I’d wear it proudly, thank you!
C’mon you guys. What is more important a few abused teen girls or the elusive swing voter? Think hard before you answer.
I am proud to tell you this requires no further thought at all: the girls, of course. I have this nasty habit of valuing womens lives over political game playing that will elect people who don’t give a shit about them anyway.
You radical!
You betcha!
I daresay there are many more young girls being sexually abused by their father or another relative in this country than there are voters willing to switch parties because enough ‘Democrats’ don’t care if they live or die and how they suffer.
I daresay you are right. Why is it so impossible for them to understand?
I called his office too and when I made my opinion clear on the phone to his staffer that I was completely against this legislation her deep sigh on the other end told me that he was going to vote for it. That son of a bitch, I hate him! He needs to go the way of Holy Joe ASAP, the disgusting prick! His staffer told me first though that it wasn’t clear how he intended to vote and that the bill was still in debate……her finishing sigh though also said that he and his staff were pretty sure how he was going to vote. What a pathetic loser my better than Coors has turned out to be!
This latest bit of theocrat idiocy carries some interesting implications for the self-labelled “family values” crowd. It essentially says the evil gubmint now has the right to define who is “family” and who is not. “Not” now includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, as well as social workers, ministers, and friends. Only the biological parents, no matter how perverted, drunk, drugged, or crazy can make decisions regarding their spawn that they created a dozen years ago in a drunken, stoned, or Jesus-maddened stupor.
It seems inevitable that this law will be used to argue for full sovereignty of parents over their underage offspring in all cases, no matter what. Only parents may make decisions like this, so why should anyone interfere with beating, abandonment, child labor, incest, or anything else as long as the sovereign “parents” want it that way?
If this legislation is finalized, I think the next campaign of decent organizations should be to inform, expedite, and support teenagers in winning legal independence.
Planned Parenthood Action of Indiana sent an e-mail alert out this morning with this letter we could send out to register our feelings on the vote.
I hope Mr. presidential hopeful Bayh’s office is flooded with these!
This will affect many more young women than those with abusive families.
Even in the most loving families, some daughters would rather die than disappoint, hurt, or alienate their parents. Think back, all of you with kind, accepting mothers and fathers; did you tell them everything YOU were doing when you were a teen ?
Sometimes our children will tell us years later of the things they dealt with on their own. “It was my problem, Dad. I had to handle it myself.” “I did a dumb thing, Mom, and I was so ashamed.” “I felt like I’d let you down, Daddy, so I couldn’t tell you.” “Remember that party you said I couldn’t go to?I lied and went anyway. It happened there, Mama. I felt like I deserved whatever I got.”
As much as we may all try to be the best parents in the world, our daughters are still being poisoned by patriachal standards that stretch back into antiquity. While we may not often engage in honour killings in America, none of us can escape the message that a young woman’s value is embodied in her sexuality, and that her family’s status is tied to her sexual behavior.
It is not just about abusive families. Shame will kill our daughters just as dead as fear.