Despite loss at polls, ballot measure raised awareness about abortion industry

Los Angeles, Calif., Jan 16, 2006 / 22:00 pm

The educational campaign leading up the vote on Proposition 73, California’s parental notification initiative, has had many positive results despite the fact that the proposition lost the vote by a slim margin of 5.6 percent, says one of the proposition’s authors, Katie Short.

In a comment, written for an upcoming newsletter of Life Legal Defense Foundation, Short says: “For the first time in decades, we had a public debate in California about abortion. Abortion and abortion providers were in the spotlight, and they didn’t like it.”

Due to the public debate, many more people now know that parental notification is not required for minors to have an abortion in California, Short said.

“School policies allowing minors to leave campus secretly for ‘confidential medical services’ are once again in the spotlight, and parents are more aware of how their rights have been taken from them,” she wrote. Many people were shocked to learn this, she noted.

Short says the proposition also exposed “the abortion industry’s complicity in shielding sexual predators, both inside and outside the clinics.”

“For the first time the public heard about how abortion clinics violate the mandated reporting laws by failing to report obvious cases of statutory rape and sexual abuse of minors by older men. … how secret abortions enable sexual predators to continue their crimes,” she stated.

The media also paid attention to the scandal of shady abortion practitioners sexually preying on vulnerable women seeking secret abortions, such as abortionist Laurence Reich.

Planned Parenthood revealed itself not as an advocate of “women’s health” but of unrestricted abortion on demand, said Short, pointing out that the organization and its out-of-state affiliates poured millions of dollars into the campaign to defeat Proposition 73.

“Planned Parenthood put on a ventriloquist act, pretending to speak on behalf of parents who ‘just want my daughter to be safe,’ it was clear that there were very large business interests at stake in defeating Prop 73,” Short wrote. Planned Parenthood has no problem with young girls engaging in sexual activity, she said.

Short also expressed her commitment to working toward getting parental notification on the ballot again. “Proposition 73 was the beginning, not the end of the campaign for parental notification in California,” she said.