California’s Proposition 4 – Anti-Choice Abortion Law Disguised as “Teen Safety”

Ugh. It’s back again.  This is the third time in four years we’ve seen this on a ballot and every time it gets defeated — The “parental notification law for abortions.” If Prop. 4 passes, teens cannot terminate a pregnancy unless the doctor performing the abortion notifies a family member.Yes, we want teens telling their parents if they’re pregnant, but the state cannot legislate healthy family relationships. If a girl can’t talk to her parents for fear of abuse of for any other reason, then she cannot obtain a safe, legal abortion. Instead, she’ll seek an unregulated and dangerous procedure.

Prop. 4’s supporters say that a teen does not have to tell her parent.  They say the law allows a doctor to notify an adult family member other than a parent. What the Prop-4ers don’t tell you is that this is only allowed if the pregnant teen formally accuses her parents of child abuse and informs the police.   Ridiculous.

Prop. 4 supporters also point to a provision allows a pregnant teenager to go to a judge and explain why she can’t tell her parents. The judge can then allow the abortion to proceed without notification. This is also ridiculous.  There’s no way that a scared pregnant 14 year old will navigate the jaw-dropping bureaucracy of the California courts and then go stand in a courtroom room full of strangers, including an armed sheriff’s deputy and a court reporter who records everything the girl says, and explain to a judge why she can’t tell her parents that she needs an abortion.

More horrifying is the Yes-On-4 crowd’s hideous marketing campaign. They’re calling Prop. 4 “Sarah’s Law.” Supposedly, Sarah was a 15 year old girl who had died from a botched abortion 14 years ago. The Prop. 4 folks say that she would not have died if her parents had been notified. One problem, it’s not true, as the LA Times reported:

“The girl’s name wasn’t Sarah; she lived in Texas, not California; and though she was 15, she already had a child and was in a common-law marriage, which means she wouldn’t have been covered by the law Californians are being asked to consider.”

The Yes-On-4ers are also trying to trick voters by telling people that Prop. 4 will “stop child predators.” According to the Yes-On-4 website, “On a daily basis, older men exploit young girls and use secret abortions to cover up their crimes.” What they don’t tell you is that Prop. 4 does nothing to stop these child predators.

“On its face, it appears to be simply window dressing to claim there is a linkage between this proposition and prevention of sexual predation,” said Diane Marie Amann, a University of California, Davis, professor specializing in constitutional and criminal law. “There is virtually nothing in the text that aims at that goal.”

Mary-Beth Moylan, a McGeorge School of Law professor who analyzes state initiatives, said the measure doesn’t add to existing anti-predator laws. But she said Proposition 4 backers appear to rely on a provision that allows a girl to avoid the parental notification requirement “by reporting that she is an abuse victim.”

“In this way, the proponents suggest they will discover predators,” Moylan said. “To my mind, this is a real stretch.”

Catherine Short, a lawyer who helped draft Proposition 4, suggested that the measure calls out abortion clinics to improve reporting of suspected abuse – such as when an older man brings an underage girl in for an abortion.

“My question to them is, name some predators you have put behind bars,” Short said. “You would think they (clinic operators) could point to cases where someone came into the clinic and they called police and he went to jail.”

Prop. 4s is not about child safety, it’s another tactic for the anti-choice extremists to chip away at abortion rights. One day in our lifetime, perhaps we’ll have a civilized, grown-up conversation about abortion. Until then, keep voting no on terrible laws like Prop. 4

The Johnny California Editorial Board Recommends a NO vote on Proposition 4.