Posturing to parents.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Oregonians have so far resisted the growing national trend to require minors to notify or obtain permission from their parents before undergoing an abortion, but the issue is back before the Legislature.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives last Tuesday mustered a five-vote margin to pass a bill that would require health care providers to notify parents 48 hours before a minor child receives an abortion. The 32-27 vote sends House Bill 2605 to the Senate, where it's doomed by opposition from the Democratic majority.

Arguing against allowing parents to help their minor daughters deal with the emotional trauma of pregnancy and abortion strikes most people as unreasonable. Supporters of notification insist that if parents must give consent before their children can have their ears pierced or receive an aspirin at a school clinic, then parents should be informed before their daughters undergo an invasive and irreversible surgical procedure such as an abortion. Even among abortion rights advocates, support for parental notification is strong.

That's why abortion opponents have been able to win passage of parental notification/permission laws in 44 states, though court injunctions have prevented the laws from taking effect in 10 states. Oregon remains among the half-dozen holdouts without any restrictions.

As reasonable as parental notification may sound, the reality often differs dramatically from the rhetoric. Oregonians deserve credit for letting this bandwagon roll by.

The experts who oppose parental notification laws are not extremists. They include the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Surveys consistently show that more than 60 percent of minors involve their parents in an abortion decision. The cruel irony of parental consent laws is that they are unnecessary for stable and supportive families, but they can be disastrous for young women in dysfunctional, abusive families.

The number of teens who risk physical abuse or abandonment for reporting a pregnancy to a parent is significant. Those adolescents will avoid taking any action, increasing their health risks. Delaying an abortion by only a few days increases the possibility of medical complications arising. Clinic and hospital abortions before the third trimester are far safer than childbirth, especially for teens.

The worse the family situation, the more likely a pregnant teenager will resort to an unconventional or self-induced abortion rather than face aggravating a mentally ill or substance-abusing parent.

The Oregon House bill attempts to address such concerns by exempting medically urgent abortions and allowing any teen who did not want to notify her parents of the abortion to schedule a confidential hearing with a lawyer hired by the state Department of Human Services. Teens could be exempt if the lawyer determined the girl to be "mature and capable of giving informed consent," or if it was in her best interest not to tell the parents, as in cases of abuse.

Those are reasonable and appropriate exceptions, but they are attached to legislation that's trying to do the right thing for the wrong reason. It's impossible to pass a law requiring Oregon families to maintain healthy parent-child communication in a supportive home environment, and legislators know that.

Instead, abortion opponents are using HB 2605 to force a vote that will give Republicans a hammer with which to pound Democrats for opposing a "common sense" bill protecting parental rights, something most Oregonians support.

It's an effective strategy, one that has worked in all but six states. But it has much more to do with winning elections and restricting access to abortion than it does with protecting children or parents.