That’s why I don’t like parental notification laws.

Your rights as a parent are not at issue here.

Wow, we really are down the rabbit hole. 85 is about parental notification and protecting families and keeping parents aware of what’s going on with their daughters, but my rights as a parent are not at issue here?

What I don’t want is for there to be an idiotic Big Government scheme that requires our family’s doctor to prove I have notice that my daughter is seeking an abortion–it doesn’t require my consent for the abortion, it doesn’t require notification that she’s pregnant or giving birth, and it certainly didn’t require me to be told what she was “up to” that got her pregnant in the first place.

Oh yes, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. You forgot Phil Angelides, who also shows up on the pro-85 flyers I receive (although apparently he changed his first name to “Liberal”). On the other side, of course, are merely humble servants of the Lord; there are no organized anti-abortion groups at all, certainly none who merely see 85 as a way to make sure some teenage girls damn well stay knocked up.

You know the California Supremes aren’t going to deny cert; the appellate opinion all but said “Hell no are we going to do anything controversial on this one, we’re kicking it upstairs.”

Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw, in a recent WSJ on-line commentary, summed up the point nicely, “A basic principle of tax analysis — taught in most freshman economics courses — is that the burden of a tax is shared by consumer and producer.” Time and space will prevent me from expounding on this point as applied to Prop 87, but the entire proposition is a great example to use in an economics or public policy class of superficial analysis and ambiguous policy formulation.

The goal is worthy — or at least worthy of public policy discourse. Heck, even the Department of Defense has for a couple of years been working toward alternative energy sources. The driving factors did not come from mandates, but from responding to “market” forces such as the direct cost of higher than projected/budgeted fossil fuels (DOD is the largest government consumer) and other costs such as reducing casualties (operating bases using renewable energy need less supplies that in turn reduces the number of convoys/people exposed to IEDs for example).

Michael McElroy, Professor of environmental studies at Harvard, noted policies such as taxing oil companies is policy by scapegoating. Prop 87 is an example of this type of “easy fix” solutions.

Both he and Mankiw advocate gasoline taxes at the pump…and you did mention you’ve never met a tax on consumption you didn’t like.

So, getting back to my question, am I the only parent actually discussing this issue here?

No, nor does it matter. Your rights as a parent are not at issue here. If you don’t want to be notified about what your daughter is up to, then receiving a notice you didn’t want is no skin off your nose; you are still free to ignore it. It IS skin off the noses of parents who do want to be notified, but can’t be because of a public policy of either (1) maximizing abortions at all costs, or (2) treating unemancipated minors as though they were miniature adults.

This is like that idiotic chickenhawk argument: do you really think your side would fare better if ONLY parents were allowed to participate in the debate? Better still, let’s make parenthood a condition of voting on Prop 85 at all, either pro or con. Then the measure will win by a landslide.

You could try talking to them, and having the sort of relationship where they know they can turn to you, even if it’s a bad situation, even if they screwed up. Or, you could wonder if it’s any improvement to have your daughter actually go to court to talk to a judge about how she should be allowed to go behind your back.

Of course that’s an improvement, as she’d have to prove grounds for going behind my back or she wouldn’t be allowed to do so. Of course, it might not prove to be much of an improvement if Planned Parenthood and the ACLU manage to buy enough judges to guarantee that every 12 year old will be ruled mature enough to decide on her own, that every girl who says “if my parents found out, they’d just, like, KILL me” is really in danger of being murdered, and that every girl who says her father isn’t the father must really be an embarassed incest victim who is covering for … her father. I like to think California’s judicial system still have a leetle more integrity than that.

Speaking of which, I’m one step closer to winning our bet on the CA Supremes and gay marriage. Either they deny cert and I win right away, or they hear the case and I’ll collect in a year or so.

This is something you have inferred, John, not something I said.

In California, Proposition 85 is being pitched as something that will help families, and that parents need and deserve. I am, therefore, the target audience–and the excuse–for this ballot measure in a way “society” is not.

So on the one hand, pro-85 folks are saying that this is a ballot measure that helps families and parents need. But if I speak up and say that, yo, I’m a parent and I don’t agree? Why, then, I’m being self-centered, and not respecting different voices, and anyway society has something to say about this measure, so my opinion doesn’t matter. Unless, of course, it’s the ‘correct’ opinion.

I would still support parental notification, because it upholds the sanctity of the family.

Except it doesn’t. Notification is not authority. It’s not consent. Legally, I don’t have the power to actually refuse to allow my child to have an abortion. I wouldn’t even, really, have the right to notification, because my child can go to a judge and get around me that way.

I don’t know that this will really reduce abortions, unless teenage girls are much stupider than they were in my day.

Mythago, you are one of the people around here I always read with respect. But it is rather unkind of you to elevate your personal experience to the level of received truth on the assumption that other people have no experiences of this issue to offer, and devalue arguments on the (possibly erroneous) assumption that those who make them have no experience to match yours.

Maybe they do. And maybe they just don’t want to trumpet them around. This is the case for me, and I’m sure for other people.

In any case, this issue is about parents, yes, but also about families, and societies, and the sort of principles and people we value, and what sort of country (ies) we want to be. We all have opinions to share about that, and all have things of value to share concerning it.

You’re a parent, and your perspective is extremely valuable, in my humble opinion. But there are other parents, and other members of families, and other citizens around too.

I’m with Russell here, in that I think abortion is a public harm, and the fewer abortions we have, the better. To the extent that the law makes abortion harder, the law is a good thing.

However, when it comes to Parental notification, that’s only a side benefit. If it happens, great. However, even if it didn’t reduce a single abortion (and I hope, pray and believe it will) I would still support parental notification, because it upholds the sanctity of the family. The State should not empancipate children from their families unless the families are broken and abusive-that’s the provision for the exception. As a rule, parents should be informed what happens to their minor children, for whom they are legally responsible. For the State to aid and abet minors to abort is a bad thing, because it sidelines parents.

I admit to being somewhat inconsistent in that I also and further support the original intent of that clause in our Abortion Act which allows minors to withold consent from abortion; to protect those teens who want to have their babies against their pro-abortion parents. That intent has been turned on its head, and I would like it back. This is, I admit, because I think the choice to abort a bad one, and the choice to keep the baby a good one.

But that’s another amendment for another day. We can’t rebuild a culture of life overnight, but what we can do is limit the damage, and make sure families are involved and there for their children. That’s a step towards a culture which is open, supportive and cohesive, and that’s good whatever side of the debate you’re on. I generally agree with both the Reverend Gentlemen who are doing a brilliant job here, but I would support PN anyway as a support mechanism.