Thousands of children are being taken across
state lines by people other than their parents to secure secret abortions.
...[A]bortion providers are taking out large advertisements in the Yellow
Pages in cities like Harrisburg and Scranton, Pennsylvania, trumpeting the
fact that their clinics, across the Pennsylvania state line, do not require
parental consent as Pennsylvania does....
This suggestion is taken up by non-related adults who want to circumvent
the law. One example made headlines recently. The case involved an 18-year-old
Pennsylvania man had sex with a 12-year-old neighbor girl. The girl became
pregnant. Rosa Hartford, mother of the 18-year-old, secretly took the girl
to an abortion clinic in New York, a state with no parental involvement
requirement. Her actions discovered, Mrs. Hartford, whose son pled guilty
to two counts of statutory rape, was later convicted of interfering with
the custody of a child.
The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP), a prominent proabortion
legal defense organization, defended Mrs. Hartford on the grounds that she
merely "assisted a woman to exercise her constitutional rights."...
For the sake of our children and our families, this must stop.
--Sen. Spencer Abraham's
(R-Mi.) statement introducing the CCPA (S. 1645)
on the U.S. Senate floor, February 12, 1998
PARENTAL NOTIFICATION LAWS ARE
EVADED
THOUSANDS OF TIMES
What happened in Pennsylvania is not an
isolated case. According to an AP wire story (Sept. 16, 1995), attorney
Kathryn Kolbert from the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Law and Policy
admits that adults take children across state lines "thousands"
of times to procure abortions for them. Thus thousands of times state laws
that mandate parental notification or consent are deliberately evaded. Unrelated
adults are heavily involved in these circumventions of the law because,
as Ms. Kolbert observed, "How does a 14-year-old get to New Hampshire
from Boston without getting a ride?" (Massachusetts, too, requires
parental consent for an abortion on a minor.)
Abortion providers are eager promoters of such evasions: Clinics in states
with parental notification/ consent statutes readily refer pregnant teenagers
to out-of-state abortion clinics (which sometimes are their own branches
or affiliate clinics), and clinics in states without such restrictions sometimes
advertise in restricted states to attract cross-border business.
One out-of-state advertiser seeking to attract Pennsylvania teenagers is
Metropolitan Medical Associates of Englewood, N.J., which became notorious
during the partial-birth abortion debate. Two of its abortionists told a
reporter
of The Record in Hackensack, N.J. (Sept. 1996) that the clinic performed
1,500 partial-birth abortions annually" -- most are teenagers,"
one abortionist noted. Their advertisement proclaims in bold letters: "NO
WAITING PERIOD - NO PARENTAL CONSENT REQUIRED."
And why does the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy defend such frequent
and deliberate circumvention of parental notification/consent laws? In Mrs.
Hartford's appeal it is argued that "The young woman's constitutional
right to choose abortion outweighs any interest her parents have in denying
her the assistance of another adult to effectuate her decision.... [T]he
'deference to parents [that] may be permissible with respect to other choices
facing a minor' has no place where a young woman seeks to terminate an unwanted
pregnancy" (Brief of Defendant-Appellant, pp. 26-27). CRLP attorney
Kolbert asserted, "If we permit any local prosecutor to bring these
types of charges [e.g., violations of Pennsylvania's Interference with the
Custody of a Minor statute], we would totally undermine the rights of young
women to choose abortion" (quoted in the Washington Post, Nov.
3, 1995). The appeals court rejected the argument, but ordered a new trial
because of faulty jury instructions.
THE PURPOSE OF THE CHILD CUSTODY PROTECTION ACT
Under the Constitution's Commerce Clause, Congress
can regulate interstate transportation and can prohibit traffic that has
a wrongful purpose. The Child Custody Protection Act (CCPA), introduced
by Republican Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan and by Republican Congresswoman
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, makes it a federal offense to transport
a minor (under age 18) across state lines for an abortion if this avoids
the application of a state law requiring parental involvement in an abortion
on a minor or a judicial waiver of parental involvement.
The CCPA avoids encroaching on state powers by limiting itself to a prohibition
of interstate transportation that would flout state laws mandating parental
involvement in abortions on minors. It is a common legal requirement that
parents must consent to medical procedures to be performed on their minor
children. It is absurd to insist, as the pro-abortionists do, that unrelated
adults should be free to take teenagers across state borders to circumvent
such requirements if the medical procedure is an abortion. The CCPA emphatically
makes the point that it shall be a federal offense to do so.
CHANGING PUBLIC POLICIES TO CHANGE
"PRIVATE" ATTITUDES
It is important that grassroots pro-lifers ask
their senators and representatives to co-sponsor and vote for the Child
Custody Protection Act (S. 1645, H.R. 3682). Enacting the CCPA will save
lives, protect teenagers, preserve parental rights -- and change attitudes
about abortion for the better. On our way to realizing our ultimate goal
of legal protection of the right to life, we must make abortions rarer and
rarer and change current attitudes of tolerance of abortion to abhorrence
of abortion.
Like the still to-be-finished Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the proposed
Child Custody Protection Act, too, will direct the public's attention to
the never-ending deceit and dishonesty that is an essential part of the
abortion "business."
Make it your job to show your fellow citizens what's going on here:
Children are secretly taken across state lines to have an abortion behind
their parents' backs and in defiance of state laws mandating parental consent
or notification -- the pro-abortionists' version of family values. These
abortions are serious and dangerous procedures -- especially for teenagers,
as even the Supreme Court acknowledged. Ironically, if complications develop,
subsequent medical care would require parental consent -- and access
to the parental pocketbook. In many instances the parents would not even
know that their daughter had been pregnant -- or even the victim of a crime,
like statutory rape. It's an outrage and it must be stopped.