Sunday, February 3, 2008

Help Protect Our Daughters- Support "Sarah's Law"

"Sarah" was 15 years old, pregnant and scared. Without her parents' knowledge, she underwent an abortion and the butcher abortionist Dr. Moshe Hachamovitch tore her cervix. Four days later she was admitted to the hospital with fever, chills, nausea, pain, and foul-smelling discharge. Sarah's body was wracked with abscesses, spreading infection that had entered her body through the damage the abortion had done to her uterus. Her brain was swollen. Her fetid fluids made their way up through her damaged bowels and into her lungs. The infection eventually claimed her young life.

When the authorities performed an inspection of the abortion mill clinic after Sarah's death, they found
the staff was inadequately trained in how to properly sterilize instruments. The administrator, was evidently aware of the fact that the autoclave used to sterilize instruments was not functioning properly. As for the instruments themselves, "two loop forceps, two tenaculums and one curette were found to have small particles of dried brownish-dark red material on them. Three speculums were found to have small particles of dried clear material on them." "The only sterilized abortion tray in the procedure room was found to contain a curette with a loop whose edge was visibly jagged instead of smooth."

Five other women also died as a result of abortions performed by Dr. Hachamovitch or his henchmen employees. As of 1999, he had been named in
at least 28 medical malpractice lawsuits alleging negligence and other problems. Two of his minions employees were convicted of manslaughter after 26 year old Lisa Bardsley was left to slowly bleed to death in one of his slaughterhouses clinics.

How can we protect our daughters?

"Sarah's Law" would help protect young girls from butchers like Dr. Hachamovitch and also from sexual predators. If approved by California voters, Sarah's Law would require abortion providers to notify one parent in writing 48 hours before performing an abortion on a girl under 18. In cases of an abusive parent, an adult family member such as an aunt or uncle, grandparent or adult sibling over 21 may be notified. A girl would also have the option of seeking confidential approval for the abortion from the juvenile court.

Under current law, a minor needs parental consent to take an aspirin from a school nurse or attend a class field trip yet a child as young as 12 can be taken for a secret abortion that often has long-term physical and mental consequences. As we've seen from Sarah's tragedy, it can even be fatal.

A study of over 46,000 pregnancies of school-age girls in California found that over two thirds were impregnated by adult men who were an average of seven years older. Abortion mills clinics routinely ignore laws mandating they report cases of sexual abuse and statutory rape. 89% of minors undergoing abortions who reported that neither parent knew about it said that their sexual partner had arranged for the abortion. The number was 93% for those aged 15 or younger.

Family Notification will help parents and law enforcement in their struggle to protect our state’s minor daughters from sexual predators. It has also been shown to reduce the risk of teen girls contracting an STD (a proxy for risky sexual behavior) by an average of 20% for Latinas and 12% for Caucasian girls.

What you can do to help

From now until the end of March, supporters are gathering signatures of registered California voters to place Sarah's Law on the November 2008 ballot. You can request a petition by calling (866) 828-8355 or emailing petitions@FriendsofSarah.com. If you are technically savvy enough, you can even download one to print here.

17 comments:

reACTIONary said...

I'm against manditory notification for teenager's health care. In most jurisdictions teenagers have the right to consent to medical treatment, and they should have that right everywhere.

Requiring parential notification will inhibit some teenagers from seeking medical care when they need it. And I can't, for the life of me, understand how such notification would increase the efforts in hospitials and clinics to steralize instruments. This is a bogus law.

As far as safe abortion goes, laws prohibiting or restricting abortion do not diminish it. Those contries that have the most restirictions have the highest abbortion rates. Those countries with the most liberal laws have the lowest rates. The only affect these laws have is to force women to seek abortions illegally, with the consequent decrease in safety.

The probable reason for the decrease in abortions where there are liberal abortion laws is that such jurisdictions probably encourage comprehensive sex education and make birth control available to their young folks. This is what we should be doing. And giving teenagers the privacy they need in order to consent to their own health care independent off their parents is essential to this.

Crimson Wife said...

Just because a girl is physically mature enough to get pregnant doesn't mean that she is an adult. As a society, we recognize that teens need parental guidance and protection in all kinds of other matters. Children under 18 cannot get their ears pierced or visit a tanning salon without parental consent- but you think they are mature enough to have major surgery without even notifying a parent, other family member, or judge?

Other states have seen a significant decrease in the teen abortion rate after passing parental notification laws without any notable increase in out-of-state or illegal abortions. The FSU study suggests that the reason for the decrease is a change in behavior.

Finally, 50% of all unplanned pregnancies are the result of contraceptive failure. Teen girls have the highest contraceptive failure rate of all age groups. Pushing contraception for teens, therefore, is not the answer.

reACTIONary said...

The fact of the matter is, teenagers in most jurisdictions have the right to consent to health care - whatever the laws concerning ears piercing or tanning salons might be.

Health care decisions can only be made in conjunction with a licensed provider, an adult who has a great deal of knowledge, experience, and understanding, and who has the best interest of the teenager in mind. This situation is NOT analogous to having ears pierced at the mall or getting a tan.

It is very important for sexually active girls to have access to hormonal birth control. Condoms are readily available, and that is good, but are not always used, or used correctly. Condoms require the cooperation of a young, excited boy. Talk about unreliable! So it is important that girls are able to get protection that THEY control.

Encouraging guys to use a condom and the girls to use hormonal birth control - especially something like Depo that doesn't require a lot of maintenance- is very effective.

Even if a girl has understanding parents, she is going to feel inhibited from talking to them about her sexual relationships. Requirements for parental consent thus work against the girl and her parents even when they WOULD consent.

Teenagers should have the right to consent to health care, and providers should NOT be required to rat them out. Sexually active girls should be able to have control over their reproductive health without having to rely on the cooperation of the guy.

Parental consent is a regressive step backwards for young women. They need help and understanding, not more barriers.

Crimson Wife said...

Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have a major conflict of interest when it comes to providing guidance about crisis pregnancies. They profit financially whenever a girl or woman decides to have an abortion but not when she decides to give the baby up for adoption. In the 2005-2006 fiscal year, they performed a record number of abortions but did not report a SINGLE adoption referral.

PP makes tens of millions of dollars in profit annually by selling contraceptives to girls and women and then when so many of them experience a contraceptive failure, aborting their babies. Believing their claims that they're interested in reducing the abortion rate is like believing one of those tobacco-company funded stop smoking ads...

reACTIONary said...

Planned Parenthood's health centers generated 38% of its income and medical services constituted 65% of its expenses. Not exactly a going concern. Planned Parenthood is, of course, a not-for-profit organization, and it does a lot of good for women, men, girls and boys, not only in the United States, but all over the world.

Here is their annual report:

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/Annual_report.pdf

I would like to add a correction: While almost all states allow teenagers to consent to medical services in general, including most reproductive health services, that is not the case with abortion services. Currently, 34 states require that a minor either notify or receive consent from one or both parents prior to obtaining an abortion; 21 states require parental consent, and 13 states require parental notification.

Don said...

Reactionary: I don't know whether or not your information about "most jurisdictions" is correct, (I doubt it) but Sarah's Law is talking about California. California law does not permit minors to have dental work, get ears pierced, get a tattoo, or even use a tanning parlor without parental consent. School nurses are not permitted to administer so much as a Tylenol nor may schools permit a student to leave the school grounds without a parent's permission. However if a girl tells her teacher that she is going to have an abortion there is nothing the school can do to stop her from walking out of class, and is not permitted to ever mention it to her parents.

Your understanding of this is totally backwards. Minors do not have the right to give their own consent for nearly every other procedure. That fact is that abortion is currently given a special status under the law, requiring neither parental consent nor notification.

reACTIONary said...

Richard,

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 27 states explicitly allow minors to consent to contraceptive health services OR have no law at all, which is about the same. The other 24 allow minors LIMITED consent. NO jurisdictions fully require parental consent.

Currently, 34 states require that a minor either notify or receive consent from one or both parents prior to obtaining an abortion; 21 states require parental consent, and 13 states require parental notification.

California currently has a law requiring parental consent for an abortion, but it has been permanently enjoined. It also allows minors to consent to contraceptive services.

Here is a link to the report from which I have obtained these facts:

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/08/4/gr080406.html

Your local or state school policy may impose restrictions on what they allow their employees to do, and may do so for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the state's health laws or policies.

Allowing minors to CONSENT to medical treatment is NOT the same as requiring health professionals to provide it. What a school nurse can or cannot do is not an indication of the over-all policy of a state.

Health care decisions can only be made in conjunction with a licensed provider, an adult who has a great deal of knowledge, experience, and understanding, and who has the best interest of the teenager in mind. This situation is NOT analogous to having ears pierced at the mall or getting a tan.

A young girl who doesn't get the tan she wants is not going to have her life ruined. A young girl who doesn't get the abortion she needs just might.

Crimson Wife said...

Only a minuscule fraction of the abortions performed are done in order to save the mother's life. That would be the only kind that a teenage girl might legitimately be considered to "need".

Abortion often has long-term negative physical and mental consequences. How many teen girls undergo abortions of convenience and suffer tremendously as a result? "Sarah" is the poster child for having her life ruined by abortion...

Crimson Wife said...

reACTIONary- I just noticed on your profile that you are a male. You can never understand what it's like to be pregnant and feel life growing inside of you. I became much more strongly pro-Life the day I heard my baby's heartbeat and saw her perfect little body on the first trimester ultrasound.

reACTIONary said...

In 2005, 1.2 million legal abortions were performed. Since 1973, 45 million. 47% of the women having abortions have had a previous abortion.

Obviously this is not a physically or pschologically dangerious procedure.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

reACTIONary said...

A few more facts:

27% of women having abortions indentify themselves as Catholic. 18% (in 1995) identified themselves as born-again or Evangelical Christians.

Here is a web site that provides anecdotal evidence for the fact that many of the anti-abortion protesters outside of clinics obtain obortions on an as-needed basis:

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/anti-tales.shtml

A quote from the article: "We have anti-choice women in for abortions all the time. Many of them are just naive and ignorant until they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. Many of them are not malicious. They just haven't given it the proper amount of thought until it completely affects them. They can be judgmental about their friends, family, and other women. Then suddenly they become pregnant. Suddenly they see the truth. That it should only be their own choice. Unfortunately, many also think that somehow they are different than everyone else and they deserve to have an abortion, while no one else does."

Crimson Wife said...

What is the ratio of formerly anti-abortion women who become pro-abortion after having one themselves to formerly pro-abortion women who become anti-abortion after having one?

Studies indicate that anywhere between 60-70% of women who have undergone an abortion regret having done so. If they are unable to get the help they need from groups such as Project Rachel or Healing Hearts, they may get trapped in a vicious cycle of depression & abortion.

The woman who heads my local crisis pregnancy center had 4 abortions before she finally found healing. She's now among the most strongly pro-Life people I know. Many of the women who are leaders in the pro-Life movement have had one or more abortions themselves. They want other women to know the truth about abortion, not the lies that those with a financial interest in promoting abortion such as PP are telling.

reACTIONary said...

When you mention studies that indicate something or another, I wish you would provide a reference or a link so that it can be evaluated.

As far as "regret" goes, some women regret having had a child. Doesn't sound like a big deal to me. Certenly not something that would call for outlawing abortion or resticting it.

reACTIONary said...

Here are some observations from a report entitled "Abortion in Women's Lives"

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/05/04/AiWL.pdf

"...the mental health of women who have had an abortion appears to be no worse than that of women who have carried their unintended pregnancy to term or of same-aged women overall."

"Since the early 1980s, abortion opponents have claimed that a large number of women who have had an abortion experience severe emotional problems as a result of the procedure. Each time the question of the psychological impact of abortion has been extensively examined, however, leading experts have concluded that there is no evidence to support a connection."

"In 1987, President Ronald Reagan directed Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to prepare a report on the health effects of abortion. Because Koop was a vocal, longstanding foe of abortion, activists on both sides of the issue expected his report to conclude that abortion is associated with long–term dangers. After an exhaustive 15-month study, however, Koop declined to release the report. In March of 1989, he told the Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations that most of the research in this area had serious methodological flaws, making it impossible to support the premise that abortion does or does not cause psychological problems for a given individual, but that the psychological effects are 'minuscule' from a public health perspective."

reACTIONary said...

The "regret" study didn't come from David Reardon or Priscilla Coleman did it? Here is some more from the report cited above, which mentions them:

"...there has been a new wave of analyses that report correlations between a history of abortion and a range of conditions, including psychiatric treatment, depression, anxiety, substance abuse and death. (Commonly, these studies are by David Reardon, director of the Elliot Institute, an Illinois-based organization that opposes abortion, and Priscilla Coleman, assistant professor in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at Bowling Green State University.) Many of these studies, however, have methodological shortcomings that make it impossible to infer a causal relationship.

Well-designed studies... continue to find no causal relationship between abortion and mental health problems. One study that has come close to the ideal research design is a long-term prospective cohort study sponsored by the Royal Colleges of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and of General Practitioners in the United Kingdom. This study followed more than 13,000 women in England and Wales over an 11-year period and compared two groups of women facing an unintended pregnancy: those whose pregnancy was terminated and those who delivered a baby. When the women’s history of psychiatric illness was taken into account, the two groups did not differ in the rate at which psychiatric treatment was required in the years following the pregnancy outcome. If anything, the women who delivered appeared to be at higher risk: Among women without a history of psychiatric illness, those who delivered had a significantly higher likelihood of having a psychotic episode than those who had an abortion.

Mike said...

Doesn't sound like a big deal to me. Certenly not something that would call for outlawing abortion or resticting it.

OK, how about the killing of a innocent human being, would that be a big enough deal to outlaw it? How someone can get his brain so twisted to view the maximum harm you can do to another human being as a good thing and the restriction of the slaughter as a bad thing is beyond me.

reACTIONary said...

Even when it has been outlawed, restricted or regulated, abortion has never been treated as "murder" or the "killing of an innocent human being. Most people aren't all that concerned about it.

You need to calm down and find something important to rant and rave about.