When under aged children who fall under the laws covering statutory rape are about to have children, any choice to have an abortion should require the consent of a public guardian, and the parents should be out of the picture. Children who are as young as 10 and 12 are having sex, and no parent has an excuse for any child who is that young engaging in or being forced to have sex. Child protective services should investigate and, if the child is of an age where statutory rape applies, a guardian must be appointed to investigate and to insure that the child’s best interest in all matters of life are being met, not just how they are having sex at that age. There is something seriously wrong when children that young are having sex, and parents should lose their ability to dodge any investigations or potential loss of custody.
If the child is older than the age where statutory rape applies, and the parents are still responsible for the medical and other care of that child, then a neutral party should be there to assist in any mess that the family cannot resolve on its own. Normal and healthy families manage to work out their decisions and move on through the difficult process, whether abortion or having the child is the final decision, but everyone should be required to have psychological counseling to insure that no one is liable to pull off a Casey Anthony gambit where the child is murdered and missing for a month before anyone even reports to the police.
If the statutory rape law does not apply, a young woman who is not mentally or otherwise incapacitated should be able to make her own decisions in life. If a parent has to consent for a 17 year old to go to war, then 17 years old is the maximum age where some parental authority must be involved. But at that age, If the young person wishes to have someone other than the parents to aid them in their decisions, or even wants to emancipate and take on the full responsibilities of adulthood, then it will just have to be a wake up call for the parents who have a child who demands to make major independent decisions and to live as an adult.
Parents will have some form of control or authority over their children for the rest of their lives, unless they are so incompetent and toxic that the child gets away or is taken away from them as early in life as possible. It is just too sad that so many infants and small children are suffering the horrific and insane consequences of generational drug abuse, failure to function in society, or even well concealed and serious family dysfunction even in prominent and publicly attractive households. Every week, there is a new and even more infuriating story of a missing, tortured or murdered child, and grandparents, parents or guardians who play the game of telling so many lies that no one can do any justice.
The sad fact is that no amount of freedom to have abortion is going to prevent or correct the disasters that have been in the making for a child’s entire life, because many of the children insist on having their children, will give in to their parents control and demands, or will have them in order to continue under the financial support of their parents or welfare long after the time when they should have become self sufficient adults. “We can only hope” is not a good enough answer.
Whether underage parenthood, adoption, or abortion is the result, there has to be more done to insure that children and their children are protected, educated, given protection against pregnancy, and put under a system where any problems are identified and dealt with before they turn into horrific events.