The House is set to vote today on The Teen Endangerment & Grandmother Incarceration Act, which passed the Senate in July.
The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (personally, I like our name better) would make it a federal crime to bring a minor across state lines to get an abortion. So even if a grandmother, aunt, or other caring adult is in a teen girl’s life—forget it. Jail for you!
According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Act “would impose an impossibly complex patchwork of parental-involvement laws on women and doctors across the country with the goal to curb young women’s access to private, confidential health services.�
The bill proposes a variety of new mandates on women, families, and doctors. Among other things:(1) The bill forces doctors to learn and enforce 49 other states’ laws, under the threat of fines and prison sentences.
(2) In many cases, CIANA forces young women to comply with two states’ parental-involvement mandates.
(3) In some cases CIANA requires a doctor to notify a young woman’s parents in person, in another state, before abortion services can be provided.
(4) In some cases, even if a parent travels with his or her daughter to obtain abortion care, the doctor must still give “notice� to the parent and wait 24 hours before providing the care.
Uh huh. This is about protecting teens? My ass.
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I wrote a pretty scathing email to my senator when he responded to my request to vote against this by telling me that he focuses on raising adoption rates and funding ineffective religious programs like Project RESPECT as opposed to protecting women's rights. I hate to say it, but I will not be voting in the midterm elections because there is simply no one willing and/or able to represent me. A real democracy, eh?
House working on enforced pregnancy and ideological incarcerations, Senate working on legalizing torture and suspending habeus corpus....
paging Margaret Atwood.
This really annoys me. It really, really does. As if there weren't enough reasons for be to keep my V-card (besides that I'm barely a teenager), now I would have to worry about this shit? Unbelievable. What ever happened to "Power to the PEOPLE"? Or is it, "Power to the Government who it Doesn't Affect at All" now? Nah, too long. "Power Away from the People" sounds more like it. Catchy, too.
Jessica,
Could you comment on why "the Act 'would impose an impossibly complex patchwork of parental-involvement law'"?
Under either the House or Senate version, CIANA would be to create a new law, 18 U.S.C. §2431(a) providing that "whoever knowingly transports a minor across a State line, with the intent that such minor obtain an abortion, and thereby in fact abridges the right of a parent under a law requiring parental involvement in a minor's abortion decision, in force in the State where the minor resides, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." I can understand why this might be considered objectionable, but I'm not sure how it is complex or unclear, still less how it "forces doctors to learn and enforce 49 other states’ laws, under the threat of fines and prison sentences." In point of fact, CIANA imposes no duties or penalties on physicians at all - it imposes penalties on the act of conveying a minor across state lines for purposes of circumventing a notification law in force in the state of usual residence.
This may or may not be objectionable, but -- complex? It seems a model of clear statutory drafting. To the extent that there is any complexity in it, the complexity will be introduced in terms of interaction between CIANA and invididual state's abortion laws, not because of CIANA itself. Could you help me out here?
Simon:
I think there is some confusion due to the bevy of amendments and alternate versions. The complex and critically dangerous bit is in H.R. 748, which was passed by the House, but not in the Senate. S.8 on its own is depressing, but not as virulently bad.
Honestly, I'm a little bewildered by the proliferation, myself. I don't even see a matching House bill to S.8, and I think H.R. 748 was amended, which means that it has to go back and get passed again next year. It's very messy.