Once again, the Monitor shows its willingness to have Government be a wedge between parents and a minor child over the issue of abortion, even as it makes the attempt to have it look otherwise. From their editorial:
…The issue might seem like common sense if it’s framed only as an issue of parents’ rights. After all, advocates say, they must be told before their kids are given an aspirin by the school nurse – why shouldn’t they be told before their daughters receive something so momentous as an abortion? No one wants to imagine their 15-year-old in trouble and themselves out of the loop.
"only as an issue of parents’ rights"? Really – only? This is simply a "mind brushing" here a la Star Wars ("…there’s nothing to see here…", as if the Force is with them). Frankly the major premise of the argument, Planned Parenthood pro-abort aficionados aside, IS parental rights and from the get-go, are trying to down play the importance of the issue with a "put-down" (er, shove-down?). The only reason why the "framing" schtick only makes sense is if one is trying to "re-frame" the issue to something else.
Which, indeed, what the Monitor is trying to do. As you read the whole piece, it seems that the Monitor has also gotten into the farming biz as they later throw up so many strawman arguments, they must really be farmers (good thing, given the current state of the print media biz – unless the loonies at the FCC get their way and start to subsidize the news-biz as heartily as they do agri-biz)
However, instead of stopping at the last sentence of the ‘graph (and which would have given them some semblance of sanity , they decide to play "Titanic-iceberg tag" with logic.
But we encourage legislators to think hard about the rights of vulnerable teenage girls whose fear of confiding in a parent or a judge – perhaps misguided, perhaps chillingly justified – would keep them from seeking help at all. It is their health and safety that must be paramount.
And that "right" that a minor child would have in this situation is…what? The only one that can come to mind is that normally given to women who have achieved the age of majority – and sadly, that is the Right to kill an unborn child. I keep listening and reading this blather of…
the right assigned to girls – I keep looking to see what they define to be that right but it never is defined.
So, parents are supposed to give up their rights and responsibilities, that judges (who are supposed to have the wisdom of Solomon") are insufficient – we are to believe that a social worker or counselor is to have the very best interest of the child in mind at all times? Yet, would the Monitor approve of a properly written law, that provides for such an "escape hatch" for those girls (and remember, we are talking about minor children) that find themselves in a pregnant state?
And then the Monitor Editors totally go jumping off a cliff with respect raising up the wheat field (strawman arguments):
There is, alas, no way to force parental notification before a girl has unprotected sex.
And whom, may I ask, is making the above claim? This is supposed to bolster the Monitor’s stance that Parental Notification laws should be of no account? This sentence doesn’t even make sense (a Microsoftism: technically correct but of no use whatsoever).
A parent’s signature isn’t needed for a minor to continue an unplanned pregnancy or to deliver a baby.
Make that twice! This, however, traverses the ground between silly and the absurd in 18 words.
In certain circumstances, minors may put their newborns up for adoption without their parents’ okay.
I’m not aware of these circumstances, but let’s agree for the sake of argument. If true, that’s thrice.
They can take on the challenges of parenthood themselves, no matter how unprepared, immature or ill-equipped, without their own parents’ blessing.
Er, according to history, that’s generally what happens. Heck, I’ve known adults that were ill-equipped and unprepared as well. What is the problem here is that this sentence, too, makes absolutely no sense.
Unless their underlying assumption should be a single answer: abortion. And here it is;
But for some young girls, abortion will be the right decision, regardless of whether their parents agree or even know.
And that is the entire summary of this editorial – how DARE legislators even think about taking away the Right of underaged, minor female children to have an abortion. In essence, they are saying that in these cases, Parents should play no role.
And then when the Monitor decries the difficulties and breakdown of the traditional family, we all can point, in part, to this newspaper as they help to desensitize its readers to the actual outcome – again, the killing of an unborn baby. It also is a proponent that the Government (be it a State salaried social worker or a teacher) always knows best.
Of course, they attempt to assuage what little guilt they may have in the first sentence of the next graph (and I say little, as it is apparent that morally, they have no problem in the "splitting asunder" of the parental bond, not to say anything about their dim view (seemingly) that the new life is of any worth whatsoever):
Studies show that most girls will, of course, turn to their parents in such a crisis. That is no doubt true even in New Hampshire, one of the few states without a parental involvement law. And when girls arrive at abortion clinics, workers there strive to make sure their young patients have a mature adult in their lives to help them through a difficult decision.
Right – they are trying to make the case that a clinic worker that will be with that child for a couple of hours during the abortion, send them back to school in a taxi, and may never see them again in the future, is simply a normal part of life – get over it, social conservatives (you bitter Bible clingers and social Neanderthals!).
This is your idea of a caring Government? Roll her in, kill the baby, and out again; no muss, no fuss. Complications and longer term problems? Not even in the picture!
Will that same crew of Government workers be around if complications do arise later on that night when a confused child starts running into severe medical problems and the parents have no idea, thanks to the Monitor Editorial Board?
After all, to the workers, it’s a paycheck – are they as invested in the overall success of a child as a Parent, who would be willing to give up their life for their child?
In the end, no law can create happy, stable families. And in those cases where alerting a parent would make matters worse, perhaps violently so, a law like O’Brien imagines could be tragic.
They want to challenge Bill O’Brien? Of course, it’s what Liberals always want to do: preen their vaunted (mostly self-deluding) sense of "social evolution" and moral superiority over the rest of us non-secularists (and bereft of any common sense, I’ll add).
Yet, seldom, as I have found by personal history, will they answer such a challenge: will the Monitor agree to debate the issue and defend their stance? Heck, I’ll even bring the gear to make it easier to put it on the ‘Net.
Summary? I doubt they would. Sadly, I think they attempt to make their point by demagoguing the plight of an extremely few children and put the vast majority of children at risk.
Because, I doubt that the Monitor even wants to contemplate the Unintended Consequence of what happens when things go wrong.
