A Florida law that requires parental consent for an underage girl to have an abortion is saving lives.
And abortion activists are angry.
Trivializing parents’ rights and using phrases like “dehumanizing” and “heartbreaking,” pro-abortion activists with Planned Parenthood and other groups slammed the law and the judges that are upholding it in interviews with news outlets this week.
Florida is one of 30 states that requires a parent either to be notified or to give permission for their underage daughter to abort her unborn baby, except in medical emergencies. Because of court rulings, these laws must include a judicial bypass option that allows girls to ask permission from a judge instead of a parent. The purpose is supposed to be for emancipated minors and victims of domestic abuse, but pro-abortion activists take advantage of it to keep responsible parents out of the situation.
A new report from the pro-abortion group Human Rights Watch found that Florida judges have been granting fewer waivers to minors in recent years, Axios reports. And, according to abortion activists, this means some teenage girls may not be getting the abortions that they want.
About 200 underage girls ask judges for permission for abortions every year in Florida, the report found. Of those, Human Rights Watch found that judges had denied requests from at least 342 minors in the past 15 years.
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According to Vice: “… researchers found that the share of young people who had their requests for abortions denied increased in 2020 and 2021, after Florida passed a bill to tighten its rules around judicial bypasses. In 2020, more than 13 percent of all judicial bypass requests were denied, quadruple the number of denials in 2007.”
Parental involvement is a good thing. Parents can encourage and support their daughters and unborn grandchildren, help their daughter understand the risks of abortion and, in some cases, be alerted to a potential abuser or human trafficker in their daughter’s life.
But abortion activists treat parental involvement laws as bad.
Margaret Wurth, who wrote the Human Rights Watch report, slammed the common-sense laws as the “dehumanizing denial of young people’s rights.” And pro-abortion attorney Kristen Flynn portrayed judges who encourage minors to choose life for their unborn babies as “passive aggressive.”
“There’s a lot of passive aggressive statements,” Flynn told Vice. “One judge told a child that, ‘Just because I’m signing this doesn’t mean that you have to do it.’”
Planned Parenthood, the billion-dollar abortion chain, lobbies against parental involvement laws.
Annie Filkowski, policy and political director of Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida, told Vice that she feels “heartbroken” every time a judge tells an underage girl that she must involve her parents in her abortion decision.
“I’m always heartbroken to see these statistics because we don’t know what happens after a young person is denied and denied again on appeal,” Filkowski said. “… We see the weaponization of ‘parents’ rights’ to strip young people’s bodily autonomy.”
But parents do have rights, and Planned Parenthood fights to erode them so it can keep making money killing the unborn babies of vulnerable, desperate young girls.
Most Americans agree parents should have the right to be involved in their child’s abortion decision, too. A Gallup poll found 71 percent of Americans favor laws requiring parents’ involvement in a minor’s abortion decision. Another poll of Illinois voters found 72 percent support parental involvement laws for abortion, including a majority of whom identified as pro-choice.
These laws also protect young victims of sexual abuse who may be forced or coerced into an abortion by their abuser. Research shows that these laws help save unborn babies from abortions as well.
