THE CHILD CUSTODY PROTECTION ACT (CCPA)
IS ON THE TOP OF THE AGENDA

It is simply intolerable that a young girl can be taken away from her home, out of state, to have an abortion - - without her parents even knowing about it. It is intolerable that an adult male, who may have committed statutory rape of a minor, can evade the parental consent laws of his state by taking his victim across the state line to have an abortion. It is intolerable that, in states which do have parental consent laws, out-of-state abortion mills can advertise "no parental consent or notification."

I hope we will be able to send [the CCPA] to the White House this summer, and I call upon President Clinton to make clear, as soon as possible, that he will sign it into law.

- - Statement by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Ms.), May 13, 1998

The Child Custody Protection Act (CCPA) was crafted by Senator Spencer Abraham (R-Mi.) and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R- Fl.), in consultation with Congressman Charles Canady (R-Fl.), chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, and the staff of the Federal Legislative Office of the National Right to Life Committee. The CCPA (Senate bill S.1645, House bill H.R. 3682) would make it a federal offense to transport a minor (under age 18) across state lines for an abortion, if this circumvents a state law requiring parental involvement in an abortion on a minor.

The CCPA is designed to stop activities that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, in the above quote, calls "intolerable." These aren't just potential abuses. Attorney Kathryn Kolbert, based at the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) in New York, is quoted in the National Law Journal (Nov. 11, 1996) as saying, "There are thousands of minors who cross state lines for an abortion every year and who need the assistance of adults to do that."

CRLP attorney Kolbert knew what she was talking about: CRLP recently defended a woman in Pennsylvania who was convicted of violating the state's Interference with Custody of Children statute. (A retrial was ordered because of faulty jury instructions in the first trial.) To refresh your memory, the accused woman's 18-year-old son had sex with a 12-year-old girl, who became pregnant. The woman then took the girl across the border to an abortion clinic in the state of New York, pretended to be the girl's stepmother, and procured an abortion for the child. The girl's true mother knew neither of the pregnancy nor of the plans for the abortion. Subsequently, the young man pled guilty to two counts of statutory rape.

In the Pennsylvania case, CRLP argued that the unrelated adult taking the child across state lines for an abortion simply helped the pregnant minor exercise her "constitutional right" to have an abortion. This is an outrageous argument.

Consider this: Under statutory rape laws a 12-year-old lacks the capacity to "consent" to sexual intercourse. In other words, the law recognizes that adolescents lack the maturity to make decisions that may have the most drastic consequences on their lives. Moreover, medical procedures of any kind on minors--right down to the school nurse handing your daughter an aspirin-- generally require parental consent. This should be particularly so when the "medical procedure" is an abortion. Even the Supreme Court, no friend of the unborn child, observed that the "medical, emotional, and psychological consequences of an abortion are serious and can be lasting; this is particularly so when the patient is immature" (H.L. v. Matheson, 1981).

In short, law and society recognize the cognitive limitations of adolescents and respect the rights and responsibilities of parents. Yet pro-abortionists--in their zealous pursuit of unlimited abortion rights--object to parental rights and willfully ignore the cognitive limitations of adolescents. They are ready to separate parent and child for the sake of the pro- abortion ideology. They are willing to sacrifice the emotional and physical well-being of confused and distraught 12- and 13-year-olds in the name of "abortion rights."

True to form, the Clinton Administration, the self-pro-claimed champion of children, has shown no enthusiasm to stop the shameful "interstate commerce" that delivers confused and frightened teenage girls--behind their parents' backs--into the hands of abortionists. White House spokesman Barry Toiv lamely claimed that the bill raised "all sorts of constitutional, enforcement and policy issues" (USA Today, 5/13/98). The White House wants to protect teenagers from tobacco, why not from abortions? It seems to be the wrong "policy issue."

In the congressional hearings, the pro-abortionists' main argument against the CCPA was the Becky Bell case. In 1988, Becky Bell allegedly died of an "illegal" abortion--which, it is alleged, she obtained because she was afraid to tell her parents about her pregnancy, and a legal abortion would have required the consent of her parents under Indiana law. That at least is the claim, now firmly established as "truth" in the press.

There are at least two things wrong with this argument. First, there is the matter of the actual cause of Ms. Bell's death. While the coroner's report gives "septic abortion with pneumonia" as the cause of death, medical experts (documentation available from NRLC's State Legislation Department) found that the autopsy report was compatible only with a spontaneous abortion or miscarriage (neither infection of the reproductive organs nor trauma from instruments was present). "Septic abortion" as the cause of death was incompatible with the physical findings. Although his autopsy report attributed the cause of death to "septic abortion with pneumonia," the physician who performed the autopsy stated in 1990, "I cannot prove [Becky Bell] had an illegal abortion. I cannot prove she had anything but a spontaneous abortion" (Dr. Pless, quoted by reporter Joe Frolik in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9/9/90).

Second, there is the offensive implication that parental notification and consent laws cause young girls to die. If the parental notification and consent laws that have been in effect for years had, in fact, had this effect, such statistics would have been big news in the pro-abortion press. There are no such statistics. Pro-abortionists dragged Becky Bell's tragic death into the debate about the CCPA because they hoped it would generate sympathy for their bizarre notion that strangers have a "constitutional right" to take your minor daughter across state lines for a secret abortion.

Tell your senators and congressman that you reject that notion. Get on the phone and ask them to vote for the Child Custody Protection Act. And do it now, when you can still make a difference.