ILLINOIS EDITORIAL FORUM

By Soo Ji Min

Bianca (not her real name) is a 17-year-old pregnant woman who lives in Chicago and is already raising a 1-year-old child. She has made the difficult decision to get an abortion and cannot tell her mother because if she did, Bianca and her daughter would be thrown out onto the streets.

The state isn’t making things easier either. Recently, the injunction on the 1995 Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act was dissolved by the U.S. Court of Appeals thus requiring notification either by phone or face-to-face, to a person over 21 years of age who is a parent, grandparent, step-parent living in the household or the legal guardian of the pregnant youth. That means if Bianca -- and countless others like her under the age of 18 -- tried to access an abortion after 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, August 4, 2009, the abortion provider would be legally bound to give at least 48 hours notice to an adult family member.

While parental notification laws are intended to protect young women, they assume that all young women can safely involve their family in the decision to terminate a pregnancy. Ideally, young women would freely inform their parents or other trusted adults. And most do.

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