We all make mistakes. We choose the wrong major, hang out with the wrong crowd, and sometimes we get pregnant when we’re under age. Becoming pregnant when you’re young, financially unstable, and emotionally unready can be a terrible thing, and sometimes the most realistic and best option is abortion.
Teenagers are immature. They do dumb things and get in trouble. However, after they’ve lived for 18 years, that one day that they’re officially legal, does not make them magically smarter and more mature. It just makes them able to buy cigarettes and buy porn on the internet. So why is that after living for a certain number of days, then and only then should women be allowed to decide what to do with their bodies? I certainly didn’t come to any amazing revelations on my 18th birthday, and I doubt many people have.
Let’s face it, it’d be wonderful if we all had a perfect set of caring, understanding, intelligent parents. But we don’t. True, I would say the majority of parents do feel a strong love and want only the best for their children, but that isn’t all parents. There are still those parents who just use their children to live out the life they wanted as a kid, or who beat their children, or instill in them terrible values, the list goes on. Does anyone really want the mom who smacks her daughter daily deciding what’s going to happen to her grandchild?
Every girl going through an abortion is going to wish she had an understanding mom’s hand to hold before the procedure. But not every girl has an understanding mom. The fact of the matter is, there are people who make mistakes, and there are people who have, bluntly, terrible parents.
If abortion for minors were to require underage consent, there could be a drop in the number of legal abortions. Too, there could be a rise in back-alley, unsafe, unsanitary abortions and a rise in unwanted children. The point is, if a pregnant woman is going to want an abortion, she is going to find a way get one, parental consent or not. No young girls are going to snap her fingers and go, “well gosh darn it!” because mom shakes her finger at abortion.
It would be fantastic if the world worked perfectly and minors and their parents got along and abortion wasn’t an issue, but that isn’t the way the world is and the law has to allow for that. Changing the laws to fit a more perfect image of society is not going to make society perfect.