Does Planned Parenthood Oppose Child Abuse?

by Jennifer Roback Morse

With all the publicity about the harm done by pedophile priests, you might

think that people uniformly disapprove of sex between minors and adults. If

a 16-year-old boy tells us that he had sex with a priest, we all now agree

that the older person exploited him. Evidently, this new consensus does not

apply to adult men having sex with under-aged girls in California. At

least, not if the girl gets pregnant.

Here is the issue. Health-care personnel are ordinarily mandatory reporters

of child abuse. But a recent survey has prompted the question of whether

abortion clinics take this responsibility seriously. A woman called Planned

Parenthood Clinics across the country and told them that she was 13, and

pregnant by her 22-year-old boyfriend. The overwhelming majority of the

clinics told her she could come in for an abortion with complete

confidentiality; they would not report her boyfriend for statutory rape.

Partially due to the publicity surrounding this nationwide survey,

officials on the Los Angeles County board of supervisors have asked

California's attorney general, Bill Lockyer to clarify the state's policy

regarding the reporting of suspected statutory rape. Do abortion clinics in

California have the same responsibility to report possible child abuse, as

other health-care workers, therapists, and teachers?

The abortion lobby contends that a “woman's right to choose” requires

complete confidentiality. But the issue here isn't what she is going to do

about this pregnancy. The issue is whether the state of California should,

as a matter of public policy, assume she has “chosen” this particular

sexual relationship in any meaningful sense.

If a 14-year-old goes to a clinic, maybe the father of child is the boy

next door, a nice kid her own age. But then again, maybe not. According to

the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood,

seven in ten of girls who had sex before age 13 reported that their first

sexual experience was unwanted or nonvoluntary. Further, of 15-17 year old

sexually active “women,” 29 percent have partners who are three-five years

older and seven percent have partners six or more years older. Surely there

is some age at which the duty to protect the young outweighs the “woman's”

right to privacy.

The abortion lobby fears that the child-abuse reporting requirement would

become de facto a parental-notification requirement. According to the same

Alan Guttmacher report cited earlier, almost 40 percent of minors who have

abortions, do so without their parents' knowledge. A requirement to report

suspected child abuse would almost certainly lead to her parents' knowledge

of her pregnancy. Abortion proponents contend that a requirement for

parental notification, even without a requirement for parental consent, is

an unacceptable and unconstitutional infringement on “a woman's right to

choose.”

It is easy to imagine a pregnant teen being embarrassed about her parents

finding out. She probably wants the whole situation to just go away. She

wants everything to be the way it was before she got pregnant. A secret

abortion helps her preserve the illusion that nothing ever happened.

The last line of pro-abortion argument is that she might be afraid of child

abuse from her parents. She might fear that her parents would beat her up

if they knew she was pregnant. So, we are back to the child-abuse issue,

and the responsibility of health-care providers to report it.

But this child-abuse argument is a red herring, a strategic changing of the

subject. If a clinic worker, or guidance counselor or teacher, had serious

reason to believe that a pregnant girl's parents would assault her, that

girl needs more than a confidential abortion. Those adults should call

Child Protective Services, as part of their responsibility as mandatory

reporters of suspected child abuse. This particular pregnant minor should

be in protective custody.

Probably very few girls are in imminent danger of assault by their parents.

Surely the most-common reaction of parents is to scream and cry and yell

and be really upset. That's unpleasant for a teenager. The thought of

avoiding that confrontation might make an abortion seem very appealing. But

not every unpleasantness is an act of child abuse. The constitutional right

to choose does not require the state of California to protect an under-aged

girl from anything potentially disagreeable that might be associated with

that choice.

The abortion lobby seems to think even a very young girl is entitled to

abort without any adult influence. But honestly, if a 14-year-old girl

babysits for your family, you walk her home. If your 13-year-old has to go

to the orthodontist, you take her, and wait for her in the waiting room. We

wouldn't send a 16-year-old to buy a car or choose a college without any

adult guidance. Yet, under the guise of protecting her autonomy, the

abortion lobby wants to let her go through the decision to abort, and the

abortion itself, completely on her own, with no support from the people who

love her. This is not respectful; this is abandoning a young girl at one of

the most vulnerable moments of her life.

A set of legal rules that allows secret abortions for any girl, no matter

how young, increases the number of abortions performed. It is easy to

understand why a chain of abortion clinics wants such rules. Planned

Parenthood sells abortion services. They want the demand for their services

to be as high as possible. They want the costs associated with getting an

abortion (other than their fees) to be as low as possible. The rest of us

need not genuflect to Planned Parenthood's combination of economic

interests and pro-abortion ideology. An absolutist position against

parental notification prevents police notification of child sexual abuse.

Surely there is some girl young enough that abortion providers should at

least ask her about the age of her partner. If Planned Parenthood can't see

this for themselves, the state of California should insist on it. Abortion

clinics should be mandatory reporters of child abuse, just like every other

health-care provider.

Jennifer Roback Morse is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She is the author of Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work.