Tonight the TVs in California are blaring with political ads for tomorrow's "Special" election. For the most part the ads are addressing: unions, teachers, financial cuts, re-districting and prescription drug care. What's missing is a healthy debate on Prop-73 and the overall definition of abortion in California. . . .
Prop 73 is a prime example of wingnut methods to slowly infiltrate and cripple a woman's right to choose. Beyond the unconstitutional attempt to enforce parental notification for minors seeking an abortion, Prop 73 defines abortion to be the "death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born." This conniving attempt to redefine abortion sidesteps the major parental notification issue in order to put into the California Law Books a wingnut definition of abortion, a definition that definately wouldn't be acceptable to the majority of Californian's even if Parental Notification is.
Parental Notification has been strucken down by courts in California numerious times for being unconstitutional. One reason for this is that it conflicts with equal protection laws in that it is only the woman's parents who are notified. Another has to do with rape and incest. But even if this proposition is strucken down by the courts, the extreme right abortion definition may remain. This is important, of course, because many of the most important legal issues left to the courts have to do with interpreting admendments and their language such as: the right to bare arms, freedom of speech, and what equal and means.
Parental notification is a failure on so many levels: 1. The government can't enforce communication or family values no matter how much it'd like to 2. The decision of an 18 year committment to a life shouldn't be made by a parent who may be responsible to their 16 year old for two more years 3. Rape and Incest do occur no matter how much we decide to turn the other way and this law would be a conflict of interest . . . .but even if Californians idiotically decide to vote for yet ANOTHER unconstitutional proposition we are still at risk of losing the battle for a woman's root to choose at the most important level: the language of the law for generations to come and they way in which it may be interpreted in the future.