Perhaps the reason young girls don’t want to tell their parents has nothing to do with abuse…
As a matter of fact, I voted against parental notification, and we have three daughters (this is one thing my husband and I disagreed vehemently about).
I was my mother’s fifth pregnancy, and her first live birth. She grew up in WWII Austria, and there were no legal abortions at that time. As a result of one of the abortions, she developed a very bad staph infection which almost killed her. The fact that abortion is illegal will NOT stop abortions. This cannot be stressed enough.
IMHO, the reason many of us voted against the parental notification law is because some parents would **force** their young daughters to have babies which they can not and will not be able to raise. While the parents (grandparents) might be willing to raise the baby, it is not their right to dictate what their daughter does with her body or pregnancy.
Having a baby at a young age has some very serious consequences for a young girl; and it is nobody else’s right to dictate how the rest of her life will play out — whether or not she should carry a pregnancy to term or put a child up for adoption, etc.
While I am personally opposed to abortions, it is not my right to force others to have babies against their will, nor is it my right to force young girls to put their babies up for adoption. This is an intensely personal decision that affects no one more than the girl who is comtemplating abortion.
I knew many girls who had abortions when they were teenagers, and all of them told their parents. If a girl is hiding something like this from her parents, it’s highly likely that she has a good reason for doing so.
Want your daughter to come to you with problems like this? Be as non-judgemental as possible, keep an open line of communication, and let her know that SHE will be the only one to make the final decision, and that you will support her no matter what she decides. I promise you, if you do these things, she will come to you for advice and help; but if she knows you will force her to go through a pregnancy that she is not prepared to endure, then she will keep it a secret and find a way — any way — to have an abortion that you will never know about.
