A minor in Indiana must have parental consent to get a tattoo, but on Wednesday, a federal judge halted SEA 404, a law which would have required the same before a minor can get an abortion. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction on the law, which was to take effect Saturday. The Indy Star reports:
Current Indiana law dictates that girls under the age of 18 must have parental consent to obtain an abortion, or they must petition the court to waive that consent. Senate Enrolled Act 404, signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb in April, would allow the judge in that case to decide whether or not it is in that minor’s best interest to tell her parents before the procedure
While the bill was criticized by some as another hurdle to a woman’s right to choose, Holcomb said at the time that he saw the bill as a “parental rights issue and responsibility and common sense.”
The paper adds:
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit against the state on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky (PPINK) in May, claiming the SEA 404 “imposes new burdens on a young woman’s access to abortion and on her health care providers, in violation of often reaffirmed constitutional rights.”
U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker ruled that the “the pregnant minor’s integrity” weighed “more than her parents’ authority,” saying:
For this reason, the mature minor as the individual who bears the full consequences of the ultimate decision is entitled to an opportunity to proceed without state-mandated interference from her parents. Because SEA 404 offers no such opportunity, it places an unjustifiable burden on mature minors in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
During 2015, 25 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 received abortions in Indiana, and another 219 girls between 15 and 17 also ended their pregnancies, according to a report from the Indiana State Department of Health.
While these numbers are not high in comparison to some abortion rates, they are still represntative of human lives that were killed. It behooves abortion advocates to ask themselves whether a 10-year old girl is actually capable of governing herself so well that she can make an informed decision that will affect her the rest of her life. Girls who can’t drive, can’t get tattoos, can’t vote, and can’t decide whether to go to school, can now walk into an abortion center in Indiana and consent to take another human life, and parents have no say in the matter.
Pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reports that “[a] majority of states require parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an abortion.” While there are variations among the 37 states with parental consent laws, at least some modicum of regulation exists that would help prevent a middle schooler from making an impulsive decision that will likely haunt her for decades to come.
When a baby is killed and a minor as young as 10 whose cognitive development isn’t even at its own advanced stages is allowed to make life-altering decisions, it is a travesty of justice.
