ws. Some states are now requiring that a teenager must tell at leastone of their parents, in some states both, if they plan to have an abortion. It has beenfound, in a 1991 study, that sixty one per cent of all teenagers who choose abortion dodiscuss it with a parent. However those who do not discuss it with their parent don't forobvious reasons: they feel they will dissappoint their parents, they fear violence, or beingforced to leave home. In the states where there are currently parental consent laws, teens who feel theycann not tell their parents have two options. They must travel to a state where they canobtain a legal abortion without parental consent or they must obtain a judicial bypass. Both of these choices make it much harder for the teen to obtain an abortion and alsotake valuable time. To prevent the teens from leaving the state to get an abortion somestates reintroduced the Child Custody Protection Act into the House and the Senate. Thebill was passed, but President Clinton threatened to veto it and it was never taken backinto consideration. If passed this would subject any one, other than a parent, who helpeda teen cross state lines to obtain an abortion, to criminal prosecution.I feel that whether or not a woman chooses to have an abortion is her own choice. Currently we do not force women who want to keep a child to abort it, so why should weforce a woman who does not want to keep her unborn baby to keep it? To outlawabortions kills women. When alcohol was outlawed by nineteenth amendment, peopledid not stop drinking. Bootleggers made or imported alcohol and sold it on the blackmarket. The same will happen with abortion if it is outlawed, it will be driven back intothe back- alleys, back to abortions being performed with coathangers. In Medicine and Christian Morality O'Donnel argues that in this country there arecertain "truths that we hold to be self evident" that being the fact that "all men are createde...
