The Road To Forced Abortions Is Paved With Bad Legislation

One of my main objections to parental notification laws is the issue of forced abortion. The justifications used as the basis for allowing parents to force a pregnancy are the exact same ones that can be used to allow parents to force an abortion. I've mention this problem before, and now I find out (via feministing) that, unfortunately, as I predicted, parents are demanding forced abortions:

The conventional wisdom about parental-notification and consent laws was that they would cut down on abortion, which is why anti-abortion activists loved them. But earlier this year the New York Times ran a jaw-dropping analysis that found the laws had no significant impact on teenage abortion rates.

The statutes did, however, have one unintended consequence. "We have parents who come in and want to force their daughters to have an abortion," Chelian says. "Their attitude is, "If I can prevent you from having one, I can force you to have one.' And we have to tell them that that's not so. The mother will say, "She's 14, I'm already taking care of her sister's baby, I can't take care of another one.' You know that it will be really hard for everyone."