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!