LIFE DIGEST: Parental laws help cut minors’ abortions, study shows
- Sep 29, 2008 - 1 -
Parental involvement laws enacted by the states have played an important role in a nearly 50 percent decline in abortions on underage girls, according to a new study.
The analysis of abortion information for minors shows the abortion rate shrinks by an average of 13.6 percent when a state approves a law requiring parental notification or consent before a female under 18 may undergo the procedure.
The rate falls even more dramatically when the law is more protective in its requirements, the study found. If a state requires parental consent, the abortion rate falls by about 19 percent. If a state mandates the involvement of both parents instead of just one, the rate declines by about 31 percent.
Michael New, the study’s author and a professor at the University of Alabama, described the analysis as “the first of its kind” on parental involvement measures.
“The overwhelming evidence in support of parental involvement laws should be a boon to legislators everywhere,” said New, also a visiting fellow at the Family Research Council.
There are 29 states with effective parental involvement laws that are being enforced, according to the National Right to Life Committee.
The study was done with abortion data from nearly all 50 states from 1985 to 1999.
Coalition targets Planned Parenthood
A new pro-life coalition has been established with the goal of putting Planned Parenthood out of business.
Twenty-nine pro-life leaders signed onto a strategy statement Sept. 18 and created the National Coalition to Defeat Planned Parenthood. Among its goals are the elimination of all government funds for the country’s leading abortion provider, a steep reduction in corporate gifts to the organization and opposition to the building of all new Planned Parenthood clinics.
Affiliates of Planned Parenthood Federation of America performed nearly 290,000 abortions in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics exist. That total is nearly one-fourth of all abortions performed in the United States. PPFA surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time last year, with more than $336 million of that total coming in government grants and contracts.
“Planned Parenthood is the Goliath of the abortion industry,” said Eric Scheidler, communications director of the Pro-life Action League, which led in organizing the coalition. “When Planned Parenthood falls, the rest of the abortion lobby will crumble–and unborn babies will finally be safe again [in] our country.”
Life Decisions International (LDI) and STOPP International, an arm of American Life League, have devoted their pro-life efforts to combating Planned Parenthood, but Scheidler described the new coalition as the first “unified national action.” LDI and STOPP are members of the coalition.
License to kill dementia patients endorsed
Baroness Warnock, a leading bioethics specialist in Britain, has stunned many in her country and around the world by her endorsement of “licensing people to put others down,” specifically those who have dementia.
In an interview with Life and Work, the Church of Scotland’s magazine, Warnock said not only should those in unbearable pain or who feel they are a burden be able to have assistance in dying but others should have the right to have such patients put to death.
“If you’ve an advance directive, appointing someone else to act on your behalf, if you become incapacitated, then I think there is a hope that your advocate may say that you would not want to live in this condition so please try to help her die,” she said, according to the Telegraph.
“I think that’s the way the future will go, putting it rather bluntly, you’d be licensing people to put others down,” said Warnock, 84.
“If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives–your family’s lives–and you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Service.”
Pro-life advocates and others expressed shock.
“It sends a message to dementia sufferers that certain people think they don’t count, and that they are a burden on their families,” said Phyllis Bowman, executive director of Right to Life in Britain, according to the Telegraph. “It’s a pretty uncivilised (sic) society where that is the primary consideration. I worry that she will sway people who would like to get rid of the elderly.”
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1 On Sep 30th, 2008, at 7:06pm, Jesse Sproat wrote:
I hope Baroness Warnock never is diagnosed with Dementia. She may be a victim of her own beliefs and endorsements. Sometimes these types of things can come and bite you. I pray that God puts someone across her path that will witness to Ms. Warnock.