Senate Bill 527: "Adult Involvement" in Abortions for Minors

The abortion rights movement in New Hampshire -- into which the author of this blog fits firmly and irreversibly -- is in a boil over Senate Bill 527, newly introduced in the Legislature by an impressive coterie of pro-choice legislators.

Entitled "An Act Relative to Adult Involvement for Minors Seeking Abortion," the bill would require abortion providers in New Hampshire to offer a particular kind of counseling to pregnant women under the age of 17. Here, verbatim, is what the counselors would be required to do:

(a) Explain that the information being given to the minor is being given objectively and is not intended to coerce, persuade, or induce the minor to choose to have an abortion or to carry the pregnancy to term.

(b) Explain that the minor may withdraw a decision to have an abortion at any time before the abortion is performed or may reconsider a decision not to have an abortion at any time within the time period during which an abortion may legally be performed.

(c) Explain to the minor the alternative choices available for managing the pregnancy, including:

(1) Carrying the pregnancy to term and keeping the child;

(2) Carrying the pregnancy to term and placing the child for adoption, placing the child with a relative, or obtaining voluntary foster care for the child; and

(3) Having an abortion, and explain that public and private agencies are available to assist the minor with whichever alternative she chooses and that a list of these agencies and the services available from each will be provided if the minor requests.

(d) Explain that public and private agencies are available to provide birth control information and that a list of these agencies and the services available from each will be provided if the minor requests.

(e) Discuss the possibility of involving the minor’s parents, guardian, or other adult family members in the minor’s decision making concerning the pregnancy and whether the minor believes that involvement would be in the minor’s best interests.

(f) Provide adequate opportunity for the minor to ask any questions concerning the pregnancy, abortion, child care, and adoption, and provide information the minor seeks or, if the person cannot provide the information, indicate where the minor can access the information.

Apparently this bill enjoys the support of New Hampshire's biggest provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE), but most of the rest of the state's Reproductive Rights Coalition, including NARAL New Hampshire and the state's two feminist health centers, virulently oppose the legislation.

I don't like it either. But I nevertheless counsel restraint and circumspection among those who are concerned about the bill.

As everyone knows, last session the New Hampshire Legislature, under the aegis of the new Democratic Party majority, repealed the state's parental notification statute, thus bringing a welcome end to the ignominious Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and back. The statute was unconstitutional because it lacked an exception to the notification requirement for when not having an abortion would endanger the health of the pregnant teen. It was also horrible public policy, because a young girl who finds herself pregnant should be able to terminate the pregnancy -- period.

It would be nice if every girl in that situation wanted to involve her parents in the decisionmaking, but anyone who has ever been a teenager knows what an impossible proposition that is. If my daughter becomes pregnant when she's 16, she should be able to have an abortion regardless of whether she decides to confide her situation in one or both of her parents. In either instance, she should have kindly, compassionate and knowledgeable people around her for help and insight.

As I trust the preceding two paragraphs demonstrates, I am stridently pro-choice. But I also know that mainstream public opinion strongly favors some kind of compulsory adult involvement in the process by which a pregnant minor decides whether to have an abortion. Many, many people who proudly call themselves "pro choice" favor such a requirement. From that standpoint, it is hardly villainous that a bunch of pro-choice Democrats in a closely divided (13-11) chamber would want to innoculate themselves from allegations by the authoritarian right that they are insensitive to public opinion about abortions for minors.

Some of those Democrats hold vulnerable seats. Those in the pro choice community who would question those legislators' support of Senate Bill 527 ought to remind themselves what it was like when there were Republican majorities in one or both chambers. That, after all, in combination with a cynical Republican governor who liked to pander to the religious right, is what gave rise to the irksome parental notification statute that the Democrats repealed last year.

They should also ask Fran Wendelboe, the dyspeptic doyenne of anti-abortion legislators, what she thinks of Senate Bill 527. Highly educated guess: She hates it, because it is calculated to appease people sincerely concerned about parental and/or adult involvement but will do absolutely nothing to decrease the number of abortions actually performed on minors. That's because every abortion provider in New Hampshire already provides counselling to their patients, quite proudly.

Some of my medical provider friends loathe Senate Bill 527 because it is prescriptive when it comes to what gets said by providers to patients. They see that as an infringement on their sacred right to use their best judgment regarding what to say and what not to say to patients.

In response, I say -- with affection and respect -- providers, get over it. The world of healthcare is suffused with mandatory disclosures, most of them arising out of the urgent need of doctors and nurses to avoid losing lawsuits. Ever heard of "informed consent"? What could be more prescriptive than that ...?

The bill needs some further clarification -- by way of an amendment -- in order to assure feminist health centers that their ability to provide services to minors will not be hampered by rigid rules about who must deliver the counseling. There is also vast mischief potential in the provision of the bill that instructs the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to promulgate rules to implement the counseling requirement. Rulemaking is a byzantine process and the DHHS has an extremely mixed record when it comes to using its authority in an enlightened and compassionate manner.

But that's what the hearing process, and committee deliberations, are designed to accomplish -- fixing bills.

Abortion, and the crusade to eliminate it, is properly viewed not as a medical debate nor even a discussion of when life can reasonably be deemed to have commenced. It's really a public policy question that stands at the heart of the eternal struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Those who would outlaw, or severely restrict, abortion don't give a damn about life -- if they did, the wouldn't be so willing to cough up exceptions for pregnancies arising out of rape or incest. What the anti-abortion movement wants is control -- because if they can assert authority over this most intimate part of women's lives, and by extension the lives of men, then control of everything else by an arrogant aristocracy will be easily attained.

Is it really that unimaginable to passionate pro-choicers that the typical New Hampshire parents of a teenage girl thinks it is reasonable that before their 15-year-old has an abortion someone has to tell her that she as a right to change her mind, even at the last minute, that abortion is one of several alternatives available to her, and that she ought to consider whether she would like to discuss her decision with her family? Indifference to that reality plays straight into the hands of the authoritarians.


Postscript: It has been pointed out that a correlation exists between the women senators who have signed on as co-sponsors and the female members of the State Senate who endorsed Hillary Clinton as opposed to Barack Obama in the recent New Hampshire primary. The mere fact that anyone could wonder whether the Clinton-Obama rivalry is somehow driving this bill is proof positive that the New Hampshire Primary is hardly the priceless asset to the state that conventional wisdom insists it is. Who needs something so uniquely calculated to sow discord and mistrust among people who should be staunch political allies?!