Boston Globe, August 1, 2006
EDITORIAL: Pregnant and Frightened
AFTER THE US Senate passed a bill Tuesday restricting access to abortion for minors, supporters claimed a great victory for "parental rights." That's an important principle, but it shouldn't obscure the concrete reality of desperate young women facing unwanted pregnancies. Criminalizing the act of driving minors to abortion clinics in other states won't do anything to reduce teen pregnancy, but it could drive teen abortion underground, making it unsafe as well as illegal.
Of course all parents hope their daughters would come to them for guidance should they become pregnant. But the sad truth is that some girls cannot trust their parents, are estranged from them, or have been abused by them. In such cases, they should be able to turn to friends or relatives for help. Many parts of the country have no abortion provider within hundreds of miles. Mississippi has but one clinic left in the state. Crossing state lines is often the only practical way to obtain an abortion.
It is hard to see how forcing a frightened 15-year-old to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term will improve the life of the teen or her child. Unsurprisingly, teen mothers are far more likely to be unmarried, to drop out of school, and to live in poverty than women who delay pregnancy. Their babies suffer higher infant mortality rates. The children born of teenagers are themselves more likely to become pregnant too young, with all the related social problems. Proponents claim to care about traumatized girls being pressured into having abortions, but this bill would press them into lives of poverty and despair.
If proponents truly wanted to reduce the incidence of abortion, they would focus on reducing unwanted pregnancy, but many of the same senators defeated funding for increased pregnancy prevention grants.
President Bush has said he will sign the bill if differences can be worked out with the House, which passed an even more onerous version that extends criminal liability to doctors. But both versions overreach in another important way: Neither allows for an exception to preserve the health of the mother, as required under Roe v. Wade. So far, the US Supreme Court has ruled that laws lacking such a provision are unconstitutional. In January, the court ordered New Hampshire to fix a similar law regarding minors because it did not have a health exception.
But the Supreme Court has changed since January; indeed, the New Hampshire case was one of justice Sandra Day O'Connor's last written rulings before she was replaced by a far more conservative justice, Samuel Alito.
It seems likely that the law, if signed, will be challenged in court, with the outcome far from certain. It is a perilous time to be young, female and pregnant in the United States.