Parental consent doesn't "help"
Study: Consent laws fail to affect abortion rates
The New York Times
For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.
The analysis, which looked at six states that introduced parental involvement laws in the past decade and is believed to be the first study to include data from years after 1999, found instead a scattering of divergent trends.
For instance, in Tennessee, the abortion rate went down when a federal court suspended a parental consent requirement, then rose when the law went back into effect. In Texas, the rate fell after a notification law went into effect, but not as fast as it did in the years before the law. In Virginia, the rate barely moved when the state introduced a notification law in 1998 but fell sharply after the requirement was changed to parental consent in 2003.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court recognized states' rights to restrict abortion in 1992, parental involvement legislation has been a cornerstone in the effort to reduce abortions. Such laws have been a focus of divisive election campaigns, long court battles and grass-roots activism, and are now in place in 34 states. Most Americans say they favor them.
Yet the Times analysis of the states that enacted laws between 1995 and 2004 -- most of which had low abortion rates to begin with -- found no evidence that the laws had a significant impact on the number of minors who got pregnant, or, once pregnant, the number who had abortions.
A separate analysis considered whether the existence or absence of a law could be used to predict whether abortions went up or down. It could not. The six states studied are in the South and West: Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
Supporters of the laws say they promote better decision-making and reduce teenage abortions; opponents say they chip away at abortion rights and endanger young lives by exposing them to potentially violent reaction from some parents.
"There are ongoing trends that are pushing both birth rates and abortion rates down significantly, and those larger trends are more important than the effect of these laws," said Ted Joyce, an economist at Baruch College in New York who has studied parental involvement laws.
And yet Indiana still has one of these laws in place. Go figure.
The New York Times
For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.
The analysis, which looked at six states that introduced parental involvement laws in the past decade and is believed to be the first study to include data from years after 1999, found instead a scattering of divergent trends.
For instance, in Tennessee, the abortion rate went down when a federal court suspended a parental consent requirement, then rose when the law went back into effect. In Texas, the rate fell after a notification law went into effect, but not as fast as it did in the years before the law. In Virginia, the rate barely moved when the state introduced a notification law in 1998 but fell sharply after the requirement was changed to parental consent in 2003.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court recognized states' rights to restrict abortion in 1992, parental involvement legislation has been a cornerstone in the effort to reduce abortions. Such laws have been a focus of divisive election campaigns, long court battles and grass-roots activism, and are now in place in 34 states. Most Americans say they favor them.
Yet the Times analysis of the states that enacted laws between 1995 and 2004 -- most of which had low abortion rates to begin with -- found no evidence that the laws had a significant impact on the number of minors who got pregnant, or, once pregnant, the number who had abortions.
A separate analysis considered whether the existence or absence of a law could be used to predict whether abortions went up or down. It could not. The six states studied are in the South and West: Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
Supporters of the laws say they promote better decision-making and reduce teenage abortions; opponents say they chip away at abortion rights and endanger young lives by exposing them to potentially violent reaction from some parents.
"There are ongoing trends that are pushing both birth rates and abortion rates down significantly, and those larger trends are more important than the effect of these laws," said Ted Joyce, an economist at Baruch College in New York who has studied parental involvement laws.
And yet Indiana still has one of these laws in place. Go figure.