Parental Notification and Intervention Act

Mr. President, today I rise to ask that the Senate grant unanimous consent to pass a bill that restores parents' rights to be part of medical decisions for their children.

More than 70 percent of Americans agree that parents should have the legal right to stop an abortion from being performed on their minor child. Consequently, more than half of the States have laws on the books that require some form of parental notification. Unfortunately, the State laws cannot be fully enforced when children travel over State lines or abortion providers assist minors in circumventing State laws.

More troubling, evidence has surfaced in recent years that abortion clinic staff deliberately fail to report suspected cases of statutory rape as required by Federal law. In some cases, staff even help to hide these crimes from parents and law enforcement

An undercover operation revealed that a disturbing 91 percent of Planned Parenthood employees agreed to help conceal an instance of statuary rape when a caller posing as a 13-year-old girl indicated she wanted to conceal a relationship with a 22-year-old boyfriend by getting an abortion. This too often means that children seeking abortions are left alone and vulnerable when making a very difficult decision.

My bill, the Parental Notification and Intervention Act, would combat the troubling trend that cuts parents out of medical decisionmaking. The bill prohibits an abortion provider from performing an abortion on an unemancipated child without written notification to parents. This creates legal protections for parents and ensures that children are not left alone or unsupported when making difficult medical decisions with long-lasting consequences.

Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 294 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. Further, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the majority of the minors who become pregnant tell their parents about the pregnancy even when they plan to seek an abortion. But it is not always possible or even advisable that a parent be informed. For some minors, telling their parents that they were sexually active, let alone pregnant, can lead to physical abuse. It can lead to those minors being thrown out of their homes. One study found that 45 percent of young people who did not seek advice from their parents about a pregnancy experienced significant negative consequences--such as punishment, abuse, being forced out of their home--when their parents found out.

By requiring that parents of minors seeking an abortion be notified and setting the bar for an exception to this rule at a nearly insurmountable level, this bill ignores this reality of what might happen to these young people. In doing so, it turns an already difficult decision for a young person into an almost impossible one. It puts minors' health and safety at risk while doing nothing to strengthen families.

This is made clear by the fact that all of the major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Public Health Association--all of these groups oppose laws like this one that mandate parental involvement in minors' abortion decisions.

Let's be clear. This is yet another partisan attack on a woman's constitutionally-protected right to choose. It is completely unnecessary and distracts from the important work the Senate is doing right now to deliver urgently needed COVID relief.

For these reasons, I object.