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Child Custody Protection Act
Ashley Horne
July 10, 2006
- The Child Custody Protection Act (CCPA) (S. 8), sponsored by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nevada), defends the inherent rights of parents to protect and care for their children. The CCPA will make transporting a minor across state lines to obtain an abortion a federal crime, if this action circumvents a state law that requires a parent or a judge to be involved in the girl’s abortion decision.
- The CCPA does not supersede, override or in any way interfere with existing state laws regarding minors’ abortions. It only addresses the act of taking minor girls across state lines to avoid existing state laws. States have enacted parental notification and consent provisions for minors because they recognize that an abortion is a serious medical decision with significant risks. The CCPA does not impose new or additional parental notification or consent requirements. It merely ensures that those laws enacted by states will be respected.
- Parents are best-equipped to assist their daughter during this time of need – not boyfriends, other relatives or friends. Parents possess the most knowledge of their daughter’s medical history, her physical and emotional health, and other crucial factors that may be unknown even to the minor. Ironically, parental involvement is required for minors to participate in school field-trips, take medications at school, and make academic decisions, yet some would circumvent state laws in order to deny parental involvement in a girl’s decision to have an abortion.
- In a widely publicized 1995 case, a 12-year-old Pennsylvania girl became pregnant after sexual involvement with an 18-year-old man. Pennsylvania law requires parental consent (or a judge’s decision) for an abortion to be performed on a minor. However, the man’s mother took the pregnant girl for an abortion in New York, which has no parental involvement law. (The girl’s mother did not even know that she was pregnant.) When Pennsylvania authorities prosecuted the woman for interfering with the custody of a child, attorneys for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, a national pro-abortion litigating organization, defended her. They argued that the woman’s actions were like those of “thousands of adults who each year aid young women in exercising their constitutional right to an abortion,” and that Roe v. Wade protects such aid.
- The CCPA will protect girls from being twice victimized by adult offenders. According to the British medical journal The Lancet, a majority of teenage mothers are impregnated by adult men. Many of these young males could be prosecuted under state statutory-rape laws, giving them a strong incentive to pressure the younger girl to agree to an abortion without revealing the pregnancy to her parents. In fact, Planned Parenthood’s own journal, Family Planning Perspectives, says that 58 percent of girls having abortions without their parents’ knowledge or consent are accompanied by their boyfriends.
- Some opponents argue that the bill is unconstitutional because it applies even if the person taking the minor girl for an abortion believes that the abortion is necessary for the girl’s “health.” This argument is baseless. State parental consent and notification laws already in effect have been written to comply with detailed Supreme Court doctrine regarding medical exceptions and judicial bypass procedures. Moreover, parents are the ones best-equipped to make health decisions for their minor daughters.
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