Mother speaks out on her daughter's secret abortion

I wrote this up over a week ago and forgot to publish it so it's old news now! Oh well, here it is anyway :)

A Kiwi mum has spoken up about her grief over her daughter's secret abortion. Helen (not her real name) found out that her daughter had had an abortion, which was arranged by the school counsellor. Helen was not consulted. And it's all perfectly legal. Stuff.co.nz first covered the story:

A mother is angry her 16-year-old daughter had a secret abortion arranged by a school counsellor.
Helen, not her real name, found out about the termination four days after it had happened. "I was horrified. Horrified that she'd had to go through that on her own, and horrified her friends and counsellors had felt that she shouldn't talk to us," she said.
She had suspected something was wrong, but her daughter insisted her tears were over everyday teenage dramas.
But Helen confronted her daughter's friends, who said the counsellor had taken the girl for a scan and to doctors. "I didn't know that they could do that."
Helen said teachers could discuss how a student was doing in school or phone parents when their child misbehaved, but would then keep life-changing situations such as abortions secret.

Read the rest here.

The New Zealand Herald also did an article on the resulting debate, with comments from Mothers for Choice, ALRANZ, and Family First's Bob McCoskrie, who made an excellent point:

The law currently means that while a parent has to sign a letter for their daughter to go on a school trip to the zoo or to play in the netball team, they are totally excluded from any knowledge or granting of permission for that same child to be put on the pill, have a vaccine, or have a surgical abortion....more

However, in a Herald on Sunday article, columnist Deborah Coddington had something to say about that:

Of course the pro-life groups and Bob McCoskrie's Family First lobby group are outraged.
McCoskrie says if parents must give consent for students to go on school trips, then they should have to do the same for abortions.
It's a fair argument but he's missing the point. The kids have already done something the parents would go ballistic over - had unprotected sex.
Isn't it a bit late to start fussing about consent forms when there's an unwanted baby on the way?

Apart from the fact that her logic is absolutely ridiculous, it's nice that she condescended to call it a "baby".
She continues:

What will a 12, 14 or 16-year-old do if mum won't sign the consent form and boots her out of home? Live with McCoskrie?

So basically, some parents may disown their pregnant daughters, therefore no parents, caring or otherwise, should be legally entitled to know if their daughter wants an abortion.

Hmmm.

And the idea that Bob McCoskrie (or any other pro-lifer) would take a pregnant girl into their home is ridiculous. I mean, everyone knows that pro-lifers don't really care about anyone who's already born. 

And what life will that unwanted baby have?

Deborah Coddington should be ashamed of herself- this is such basic pro-abortion fallacious rubbish. Basically, "the child might be abused/battered/neglected/violently killed after it's born, so it's much better to violently kill it* before it's born".

Pro-lifers have no right to ruin a young girl's life and a foetus is just that. It can't survive on its own so has no claim over the mother.

Wow, go tell every pregnant woman out there that their "foetus" is just a life-ruiner. Oh, I forgot- if it's wanted, it's a baby, but if it's unwanted, it's a foetus. And the whole "it can't survive on its own" argument is so blatantly fallacious but so widely touted that I'll have to do another blog post on it.

There were also two articles with opposing views from counsellors. Chris Hooker from the Association of Counsellors says:

We would rather work with parents. It's more comfortable and productive when we can, but I come back to that basic thing – if it's not confidential, kids won't get the help they need... more

And Steve Taylor, director of private counselling practice 24-7 Ltd, says:

The fact is that no client of a Counsellor has a right to blanket confidentiality, and extreme care must be taken when the client is a young person, particularly a young person in crisis... more

In closing: doesn't it seem a bit ironic that a person must be 16 years old to consent to sex, but girls of any age are able to get an abortion without parental notification or consent? Does it not occur to those people who advocate a girl's "right to privacy" that many girls under 16 who get abortions may well be victims of statutory rape? Is it helping an underage rape victim to get her an abortion (thereby eliminating evidence of the crime) without at least notifying her parents? It's not rocket science that sexual predators use abortion to cover up their crimes. In any case, the fact that a parent has no say in their child's welfare in such a traumatic situation is a travesty. How ironic that the law that enshrines this "right" of underage girls to have an abortion without parental consent should be called the Care of Children Act.

*Just out of interest- why are we still saying "it"? The baby/unborn entity/fetus/whatever is never an "it". From the moment of conception the "it" is a he or a she. Using "it" is just one more way that the dehumanisation of the unborn has entered our vocabulary. If in doubt, just be politically correct and say "she".