Parental Notification: Common Sense, Not Rocket Science

A few weeks ago my ringing telephone showed a number I don't like to see flashing on my caller I.D. It was my second-grade son's school calling during school hours. My kid had taken a fall from the playground monkey bars; he'd banged his head. "Nothing too serious," the school nurse assured me, "but he says he's got a headache from the fall and would like to come home." Because I work at home, picking up my son early wouldn't be a problem. I had only one request of the nurse. "Could you give him a children's aspirin before I get there?" "Oh, we're not authorized to administer medicine to children, without written permission from parents," she told me. I found this news fascinating. "So you're saying if I give you written authorization today, you'll be covered to give him an aspirin in the future?" Her response: "Not exactly. It's not a general authorization. What you need to do is authorize the school in writing each time you want to allow the school to give your son aspirin." I thought about that en route to pick up my son. If I'm required to hand over written permission each time he might have a physical pain suited to aspirin, I could just deliver the aspirin to the school myself. That's a strict policy. Guess what? I don't mind one bit. If my son needs medicine — yes, even low-dose "children's aspirin" is medicine — I not only want to know, I want to supervise. Hell, I want to give him the medicine myself. But if my underage son were a pregnant daughter seeking an abortion without my knowledge, I wouldn't have to worry about those pesky phone calls from persons in positions of authority, persons I might naively expect to behave like, oh, responsible people sometimes called adults. That's because in my state of California, Planned Parenthood is allowed by law to perform abortions without notifying parents of minor girls. A 16-year-old California girl cannot use a tanning bed or get her ears pierced without written parental consent. But she can undergo a surgical abortion without parents even being notified. Who benefits from keeping parents in the dark? Planned Parenthood runs the largest chain of abortion centers in America. They make money doing abortions. And let's not forget to mention the guys who impregnate young girls and then pressure them to get an abortion. A study of 46,000 pregnant minors in California found that 71 percent were impregnated by men with an average age of 22.6 years old. Guess who's on the side of these child predators? Planned Parenthood, that's who. If you're a parent or a grandparent of an underage girl, Planned Parenthood hasn't the slightest interest in what you think. Morever, they benefit precisely to the extent that you're kept out of the information loop. But, wait. Isn't Planned Parenthood generally staffed by women who consider themselves feminists? Yes. Don't most feminists claim to want to end the expoitation of women by men — especially self-serving men who would prey on highly vulnerable women? Right again. So you may be surprised to hear Planned Parenthood staff in many California cities on tape telling a 13-year-old girl that they will conceal her sexual exploitation by a 22-year-old predator. I am required to drive to my son's school if he needs an aspirin. But a 14-year-old girl can receive an abortion, a potentially life-threatening procedure, without her parents ever knowing. This doesn't make sense. That's because it's crazy. California Proposition 85 restores parents' right to know what is happening to their own child. I'm voting yes on 85.