No One Knows, Does Anyone Care? Conclusions from an Attempt to Study Parental Consent and Notification Laws from a Functionalist Approach

I am aware that some amount of academic and purely legal discourse is inherent in an established legal system. However, I find it problematic that this type of discourse often entirely overshadows discussions of real-world concerns and effects. I therefore decided to attempt a functionalist study of laws mandating that minors seeking abortions have parental consent or notification. I chose to study abortion rights because I find it especially disturbing that legal decisions surrounding such an important - one-third of women will have at least one abortion by age 45 - and controversial issue are rarely discussed in terms of how they affect people, and are instead often framed in either legal or moral terms. I chose to examine parental consent and notification laws specifically, because, as the states vary widely in their use of these laws, I thought it might be easier to determine their real-world effects through a comparative approach. My research did not produce a clear picture of the effects of parental consent and notification laws, but it did lead me to draw two other conclusions: 1) that my education has not equipped me to do this type of research and 2) our government, for whom this research should be most important, does not care to conduct it.

Problems in Applying the Functionalist Approach

The two primary difficulties that I had in trying to find out the effects of parental consent and notification laws were 1) finding data that spoke to these effects and 2) interpreting this data once I found it.

First, it was difficult to find relevant data because the only way that I know how to research is Google, and attempting to find statistics on abortion forces one to wade through the rants of an amazing variety of nutjobs before arriving at anything useful.

After finding a handful of relevant studies through the National Institute of Health, I had to do additional research to understand what I was reading. Eventually, I was able to understand the NIH studies, but I was made aware that others who have studied statistics or sociology are probably better equipped to understand this type of information than I am.

The studies on parental consent and notification laws do not indicate what, if any, effect they have on people. These studies focus on comparing the minor abortion rate in states with and without such laws, and occasionally look at what point during a pregnancy a minor is likely to have an abortion, with inconclusive results. Although one study indicates that abortion rates among minors do drop after the enactment of a parental consent or notification law, a different study indicates that this is possibly accounted for by minors who leave their state to obtain abortions in a state that doesn’t have these laws.

Beyond being unable to show the effects of parental consent and notification laws on abortion rates, the studies that I found did not address the wide range of other effects that such laws may have. To truly understand the consequences of these laws, their economic, sociological, and psychological consequences (on groups as well as individuals) would also need to be studied.

Educational Shortcomings Evidenced

In a broad sense, all I want from my education to learn is how forms of oppression work so that I can push back against them. My struggle to research even one small issue brought me to a disappointing conclusion: After five years of higher education, I lack not only substantive knowledge in this area, but also the skills to effectively seek it out. I do, however, retain hope for my educational future: If my classes here fail to teach me the things that I need to learn, and I am unable to convince the administration to accommodate my needs (although I was encouraged by the recent student action in regards to the Human Rights Clinic), I will still be able to seek out the lawyers who are already using their licenses to do the work that I want to do, and ply them with coffee and phone calls until they teach me what I need to know.

Governmental Shortcomings Evidenced

I am aware that human beings are generally emotional creatures, and that it would probably be impossible to have a depoliticized discussion of abortion regulations and their effects in purely rational and scientific terms. However, I do think it is possible, and necessary, to develop a greater understanding of these effects and to have that inform our discussions. I would like to see an increased national interest in studying abortion regulations from an economic, sociological, and psychological perspective, and I would like to see our governmental officials forced to at least consider these studies in their discussions of abortion related issues. Our government’s failure to do this is evidenced by the relative dearth of information about the actual effects of abortion regulation, and by the lack of attempt to acquire more. What we get instead is our nation’s decision makers grounding their discussions surrounding abortion in unsupported assertions. These assertions range from conclusory and offensive (the paternalistic language from the Casey court implying that the state is better equipped to decide what is best for a woman’s emotional and psychological well-being than the woman herself) to outright fabricated and genuinely frightening (Senator John Kyl’s statement that abortion services are “well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does”). I do not wish to delve too deeply into speculation about what, if not actual information, is guiding these debates, although any such speculation I would make would not reflect favorably on our government’s alleged commitment to the respectful and equal treatment of women, their bodies, and their sexuality. But regardless of what I think may be really going on in the heads of the government officials, regulating abortion, or for that matter anything, with a willful ignorance of real world consequences is seriously problematic: is there any set of criteria that would allow for a meaningful evaluation of a regulation or policy without knowing what it does? The answer to this question doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the decision-making process of our nation’s most powerful officials. In fact, it frightens me so much that I cannot allow myself to think about it for too long.