The Story behind Prop 4 and The Shifting Demographics of the Right to Choose

[This blog is two articles: the first is an editorial in the LA Times on Prop 4, and the second is from the Feminist Law Profs blog on The Shifting demographics of abortion and the political fall-out which talks about the rate abortions getting lower - which everyone wants - but that the rate among non-white and low-income women have fallen more slowly]

Proposition 4 isn't really about parental notification; it's an attack on the right to an abortion.
September 25, 2008

The story behind "Sarah's Law" says a lot about it. "Sarah" was, according to Proposition 4 supporters, a 15-year-old girl who died from an abortion gone wrong 14 years ago, a death that might have been prevented had her parents been notified beforehand. Much of that is false. The girl's name wasn't Sarah; she lived in Texas, not California; and though she was 15, she already had a child and was in a common-law marriage, which means she wouldn't have been covered by the law Californians are being asked to consider.

That's how far the Proposition 4 campaign reached to come up with a poster girl. The initiative purports to protect California girls from dangers associated with abortions by requiring that their parents be notified. But Proposition 4 attempts to solve something that isn't much of a problem. There's no evidence that California's teenage girls are harmed by abortions with any frequency, whether or not their parents have been notified. The most recent known case of serious injury that might have been prevented by Proposition 4 occurred in the 1980s.

In fact, under the guise of protecting underage girls, this proposal really is just the latest attempt to impose any obstacle in the exercise of reproductive freedom. This represents the third try in recent years to pass such a measure. California should reject it again.

We sympathize with the concern that caring parents are sometimes left in the dark about a daughter's abortion. It is painful to imagine a child attempting to manage such a crisis without guidance. Still, both sides concede that most parents already know of their children's pregnancies -- 60% of the parents of 15-year-old girls said they were aware.

Proposition 4's writers say they crafted a measure that would permit girls in potentially abusive situations to get an abortion without their parents being notified. To do so, they would need to tell another adult relative. But a girl can use this option only if she makes a written accusation alleging that her parents are repeat child abusers, with the complaint to be turned over to authorities. Spoiler language like this makes it hard to believe that Proposition 4 is chiefly about girls' safety.

The real safety concerns are these: If this measure passes, some girls will seek out illegal abortions rather than notify their parents. Some will attempt to hide the pregnancy, go without prenatal care, give birth alone and abandon the newborn. With no real evidence that this proposal would enhance the welfare of the state's teens -- and with no doubt that it would roll back decades of hard-won constitutional rights -- Proposition 4 deserves defeat.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-4prop25-2008sep25...

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Shifting demographics of abortion and the political fall-out

An important new report from the Alan Guttmacher Institute analyzes trends in abortions from 1974 to 2004, a time frame that dramatically highlights generational shifts among American women. The key findings:

* The overall rate of abortions is at its lowest level today since 1974. It peaked in 1980, and the rate today has dropped almost one-third (from 29 per 1,000 women to 20 per 1,000 women) from the 1980 peak.

* BUT - the rates have fallen much less among non-white and low-income women. As a result, the net effect is that abortions are becoming more concentrated among women of color than among white women, and likewise for low-income, rather than middle- and upper-income women.

About 70 per cent of all pregnancies among African-American women are unintended, compared with 48 per cent of pregnancies across other racial groups.

The social reality for each group is reflected in the fact that 5 per cent of black women had an abortion in 2004, compared to 3 per cent of Hispanic women and 1 per cent of white women.

The remarkable drop in the overall rate is proof that something is working to prevent unwanted pregnancy, since the abortion rate is an artifact of the unwanted pregnancy rate. It’s frustrating that the fundies try to claim the credit for abstinence only programs - frustrating because many other studies show that those programs are generally failures.

My bigger concern is about what the political fall-out of these demographic changes will be for a woman’s right to have an abortion. Some of the groups litigating abortion rights in the 1970’s stressed that the lack of legal abortions had a disproportionate impact on poor women - there was a “poverty” amicus brief in Roe v Wade, built on an equal protection theory. But the face of the abortion issue was that of a white middle-class young woman, a face that - whatever its other problems - also signaled that this was a demand that cut across almost every segment of American society.

I worry that the AGI report data tell us that abortion is becoming more a minoritarian issue. If so, we are at a moment when social policy and law can move in one of two directions. Our society could move to change the life circumstances of the young women who now face unwanted pregnancy, and therefore seek abortion, at much greater rates than other American women, by providing real choices over their futures. Or, we could - silently, without acknowledgment - continue down the path of cutting them loose from whatever remains (not much, it seems in the moment) of the American vision of a decent middle-class life of work, family and aspiration.

http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=4111