Prop 73

In today's Daily News there is an editorial about Prop. 73. Prop 73 is a loaded measure, the main gist of it is about parental notification. Here's the full text: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/bp_nov05/voter_info_pdf/text73.pdf

Now parental notification polls well - who can be against supporting families and keeping parents involved in their children's life? Now, this measure doesn't actually have anything in it to foster better family relationships. Nope it says nothing about creating resources for fostering better relationships or encouraging frank discussions about the birds and the bees. Instead it calls for notification of parents if a doctor finds that a girl wants to get an abortion. Now, you'd think that the parent might want to know if the girl is pregnant - Nope! Nothing in there required that they be notified if the girl is pregnant.

Now that just boggles my mind - would the parents want to know if she is pregnant? Simply pregnant? Then the could help her get pre-natal treatment or support her through the process of getting an abortion.

Which means that a scared, ill-equipped to be a mother, girl goes to the doctor, find that she is pregnant and learns that in order to get an abortion, her alcoholic parents must be notified before she can have the procedure. Just for fun lets say she is 14 and had a 20 year old lover. As we are all aware of this epidemic of statutory rapes which this bill is supposedly going to stop.

She then declines the offer and leaves the office. Nothing happens. Her parents are not notified nor is the rapist caught. She then goes to the library and hops no the internet to find alternative methods. Prop. 73 has just eliminated the safe way for her to terminate her pregnancy so that she might continue high school, go to college and not be a teenage mother.

On the internet she learns that the abortion pill is a combination of mifipristone and misoprostil. Next she finds an online pharmacy that sells it with out a prescription. She gets the product which she hopes, as some of those online pharmacies are less than reputable, is the actual medication and guesses at the dose... and she may or may not have a "spontaneous abortion" that could land her in the emergency room. Or she could find a back alley abortion doctor who is just some psycho with a knife waiting to prey on young, vulnerable girls.

As it is, we do not need a law mandating family relations. We didn't need Congress involved in Terri Shiavo's death and we don't need a state constitutional amendment that is more about getting abortion to be defined as, "the death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born" than it is about parental involvement.

I urge all Californians to vote no on Prop 73... but don't stop there. Vote all the initiative down. The governor has mandated an election at our tax payer expense because he is unable to get his way with the legislature - tell him no.