Our Policy of Ignorance Forces Teen-Agers Into Parenthood

California is facing a tragic epidemic. All of the recent studies of teen-age sexuality reach the same conclusion: The number of teen-agers who are sexually active continues to grow. The younger the teens are when they begin having sex, the less likely they are to use any type of contraception. It’s a cycle that shows no signs of ending, and it brings with it an epidemic of teenage pregnancy that results in economic, medical and social problems.

In response to this crisis, some legislators have said that if we told minors what they need to know about preventing pregnancy or gave them access to contraceptives, they would be encouraged to have sex. So the legislative answer has been to force teens to talk to their parents once they are pregnant.

In short, the state Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian have adopted the “closing the barn door after the horses get out” approach.

Under the guise of encouraging family unity and protecting pregnant minors, California has joined states attempting to mandate parental involvement in a minor’s decision whether or not to have an abortion. Recently courts in Georgia and Minnesota struck down similar laws because of the unconscionable burden and dangerous medical delay that the laws caused for pregnant minors who chose to have an abortion.

California should have learned from those states. You can’t legislate love and communication.

The Minnesota experience is particularly striking. From 1981 through 1985, 7,000 pregnant teen-agers were subject to the parental-consent law. One-half of them opted not to tell their parents, and went to court to seek permission at considerable expense to the minor and the courts.

The teen-agers who decided not to tell their parents and to go to court instead found that they had to tell their story to almost two dozen government employees--strangers--along the way. The entire experience was so traumatic that many minors simply dropped out. Many more delayed seeking court help at a time when every week of delay in seeking an abortion means greater medical risk to the minor.

When Minnesota’s parental-consent bill was struck down last year, the evidence at the trial overwhelmingly demonstrated that the state’s five-year experiment with lives of pregnant minors was an unqualified failure. The state was unable to show any support for its argument that this law protected pregnant minors or promoted family unity. And the state could not dispel the dramatic reality that in the five years during which parental consent was required, Minnesota’s teen birthrate soared, the number of dangerous second-trimester abortions for minors increased, and the number of doctors willing to get involved in providing abortions to minors decreased.

The truth, according to national surveys, is that the majority of pregnant teen-agers voluntarily tell a parent and seek help. Legislators know this. But they pretend that their false claim to morality and family integrity will change the result in this state.

The truth is that members of the California Legislature are not interested in protecting pregnant teen-agers. They are interested only in winning elections. But they are elected to display courage and intelligence, neither of which they have shown on this issue. Just look at one of the amendments rejected by the state Senate. Sen. Barry Keene (D-Benicia) offered an amendment to exempt father-daughter incest victims from the law. The Legislature rejected that amendment, saying that incest victims could seek consent from the courts like any other pregnant teen-agers. That is nothing short of foolish, given all the shame and recrimination that we know prevents most incest victims from acknowledging the problem in the first place.

The United States continues to have the highest teen-age birth and abortion rates among the major Western industrialized nations.

We have depended for too long on ignorance to solve the problem. It is time that we turned to education instead of forcing teen-agers into premature parenthood.