I ask you to, please, in considering the “Child Custody Protection Act [CCPA],” to put aside your personal opinions on abortion and to please just consider the safety of the minor children of our nation whose lives are put at risk when taken out of their home state to avoid abortion laws that are designed to protect them from harm.

−Joyce Farley before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Joyce’s daughter, Crystal, was only 12 years old when she was intoxicated and raped by a 19-year-old whom she had met at the high school where she attended the seventh grade. On August 31, 1995, Crystal Farley went missing.  An investigation conducted by the police and school officials discovered that Crystal may have been transported out of state to receive an abortion.  Her mother had no idea that Crystal was pregnant.  To Joyce’s horror, after Crystal had been returned home early that afternoon, she learned that the mother of the 19-year-old male had transported her daughter to New York to get an abortion. 

Joyce Farley said:

            Situations such as this are what the “Child Custody Act” was designed to help prevent. I am a loving responsible parent in whose parenting was interfered with by an adult unknown to me. My child was taken for a medical procedure to a physician and facility that I had no knowledge of.

Now 22, Crystal Farley Lane described the abortion and its complications to the committee:

I was awake through the entire time and asked them to stop but no one listened to me. I think all the time about how things would have been different if my mom was with me or if I had told her I was pregnant. I would have been taken care of with love rather than how I was treated. After the abortion things started to go wrong right away and just kept getting worse until my mom took me to our family doctor and on to the hospital. Since the first abortion I had was incomplete, the procedure needed to be repeated. Going through all this was the most terrifying time of my life.

This story is only one of many that make the need for The Child Custody Protection Act so crucial.  Named one of the 109^th Congress’ Top Ten priorities, the CCPA (S.8) would criminalize the “[t]ransportation of minors in circumvention of certain laws relating to abortion.”  This bill would prevent those who are not the parents or guardians from taking a minor out of states with parental notification laws into states that do not require parental consent.    

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nevada) introduced the bill last year in the Senate, where it remains  in the Senate Judiciary Committee with 38 co-sponsors. 

On Wednesday, June 28, Concerned Women for America’s Project 535 will be lobbying to members of the Senate to support this bill.  Please help by urging your senator to support moving this bill out of committee and to vote yes to the Child Custody Protection Act! U.S. Congress switchboard: 202-225-3121.

To read Joyce Farley’s testimony, click here.  For Crystal Farley Lane’s testimony, click here.

Melanie Mitroff is a student at Liberty University and an intern with Concerned Women for America’s Ronald Reagan Memorial Internship Program.