For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.
It's believable. I gotta believe the large majority of teenage girls who get pregnant come from families without a decent moral base. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the conversations go something like this:
Girl: "Daddy [assuming she knows who her daddy is], I'm pregnant and want to get an abortion."
Daddy: "Hoom, ba. For dat, oh. Whooo."
G: "Daddy, did you hear me? Daddy?"
D: "Oh, um, ooooooh."
G: "Daddy, you on the H again?"
D: "Ohh, ummmm."
G: "Daddy, you want to smoke a joint?"
D: "Yes! Did you score some weed?"
My apologies, incidentally, to readers who tried to raise their daughters right and generally did the right things, but still got stung with a pre-marital pregnancy. My comments above are geared toward the unstable family structure. I'm painfully aware that teen pregnancies occur across the socio-economic spectrum, though I'm also aware that they tend to be focused in the "white trash" and "inner city" elements of our population.
