A sad day for Arnold... [:frown:]Follow

So an unwanted pregnacy creates a stigma while cancer won't right? Now that may be true, but then what you are saying is if a child feels a stigma or scared about something it is better to keep it bottled up inside them and not tell their parents?

This way they have almost no chance of getting any type of counseling or help with coping with the issues that they face. Sounds like a great idea.

Yes, but specifically in California those two cultures are expanding really, really fast.

Because we all know how teenagers are rational thinkers who know that their parents are more concerned about their daughter's health than they are angry about their daughter getting banged.

I take pride in my WoW toon.

Aegis has one, too, go bother him.

Edited, Wed Nov 9 21:37:58 2005 by DodoBird

Go here if you care to learn more. (which you probably don't)

Tell it to Illia.

It isn't that black and white.

Or brown in that case.

I believe only people of the right skin colour and gender should be able to vote. Care to compare ideal facist democracies?

You need to add in accent, too. Then we're there.

It was an example of parents not necessarily having the best interests of their offspring as their prime motivator. The age is of the woman is irrelevant.

Look, I am not even arguing that that young teens should definitely have the right to privacy. I am arguing that the issue is a complex one. Which it is.

Looks like you should have convinced the voting masses otherwise then, huh?

Democracy is a *****

Um... But it's the government choosing whether to allow a child's choice to outweigh the parents though, so it's all about the government taking away that power from the parent, right?



I think a hell of a lot of teens will avoid telling their parents about a pregnancy if they're legally allowed to simply to avoid the embarassment and confrontation that they believe will occur. Being grounded isn't a "compelling reason" not to inform the parents of a medical decision like abortion IMO. What exactly are you protecting these teens from anyway? Do you have any statistics on the rates of parents who'd do harm to their teenage daughters upon discovering they got pregnant? Or is it that there's a concern that parents would talk their children out of having abortions?

Even your example doesn't follow that logic. She wasn't a minor, and was not required to inform anyone of anything by any law, but was still discovered and was forced to have an abortion by her parents (after tbey killed her boyfriend). Um... So how exactly does not requiring a teen to tell her parents about a decision to have an abortion change that? It doesn't. Those extreme cases will occur anyway. The law at question doesn't affect it one way or another.




Yes. But the problem is that until emancipation (typically at age 18), the teen is legally the responsiblity of the parent or guardian. They are civilly and criminally responsible for acts their child performs. This includes things like doctor/patient confidentiality.

Your argument is totally bogus because in every other single aspect of medical action, the parents are required not only to be informed but to assent to any medical action taken by a medical professional. Doctors are not allowed to so much as proscribe simple medications for a minor without the parents permission. They certainly cannot perform any sort of surgical proceedure.

Why is this case different? It's different because it's a politically charged issue with "sides", and each side wants to "win", and winning sometimes entails making arguments that don't make any damn sense at all. The pro-choice movement is predicated on the assumption that a womans right to her own body with regards to procreation is an absolute right that can't be abridged by any other law or right. So, a logical extension of that assumption is that a teens right to her own body in the case of a pregnancy superceeds even the parents rights and responsibilities when it comes to that teens medical care and health. If the pro-choice folks were to conceed that a parent can and should have *any* say in the medical care of a child with regards to procreation, then that would be seen as "losing ground" in the war over the issue.

So they fight a ridiculous position. And it really is ridiculous. I've seen no statisics to show that requiring parents to be informed of teens seeking abortions affects the rates of violence towards those teens, or the rates of the abortions as a result, or any other aspect of this issue. Should we remove a parental right that's prevalent in every other single medical case just because we feel like it? It just seems like an abuse of power to do so.

Edited, Thu Nov 10 19:36:56 2005 by Patrician[/quote]

You completely missed the point. The point wasn't that that case in particular would've benefeted from the abscence of the law. The point was that parents don't always know what is best for their child, as Pat himself said.

And my point is that it doesn't matter if the parents don't know what is best for their kid, because the law states that special cases, when brought up in court, can bypass the required notification of the parents.