Planned Parenthood Yields Nothing in Alaska

An Alaskan newspaper article reported this weekend that Planned Parenthood is attempting to block an initiative by (now) Governor Parnell which would enforce parental notification before an abortion procedure could be performed on a minor. The initiative provides for certain exceptions, but otherwise requires that a parent, legal guardian, or custodian must be notified of a minor's abortion procedure at least 48 hours before it takes place. See the text of the initiative.

Parnell's certification does not put the initiative into law, but only makes it possible for the initiative to go up before Alaskans in a public vote, if pro-life advocates can gather enough signatures by a deadline next year. (Which, I suspect, will not be very difficult.)

It should be emphasized here that the initiative does not require parental consent, only parental notification. Former Governor Palin recently fought and lost a similar battle in the state legislature, as I reported earlier.

I recently submitted a letter to editor of that local newspaper, the substance of which I provide here:

Thank you for informing us on Sunday of Planned Parenthood's lawsuit, which endeavors to ensure that Parnell's initiative, which would enforce parental notification before abortions, never goes to public vote. Once again, Planned Parenthood demonstrates that their agenda has nothing to do with "planning" or with "parenthood", but everything to do with ensuring that abortion remains the social norm for young women. Certainly, what thought is more terrible than the possibility that a young girl might have the advice of a concerned parent before having her fetus pumped out of her womb? What right is more sacred than the right of a teenager to have an abortion without the meddling of a loving mother, who may have gone through the same procedure herself at one time? We will not allow a minor to purchase cigarettes, but of course we must allow her to have an invasive surgery without possible intervention from an adult. In President Obama's speech at Notre Dame, he said "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually, it has both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. Let's reduce unintended pregnancies." I guess that "together" does not include the parents of candidates for abortion procedures.

[Note: I mistakenly used only the term 'fetus' in my letter, when 'embryo' would be the technically correct term in an early abortion. This is a distinction I noted previously. I hope that the slip does not take much attention away from the substance of the message.]