Madeleine Flannagan of MandM.org Blog has just appeared on a very interesting TV panel on Abortion and Parental concent on Pacific Viewpoint.

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Ohmigosh, you read them, too? That’s one of my favorite blogs ever! I knew about her appearing on…

You write ”if you wish draw an analogy between abortion and other medical procedures I am pretty sure a child under 16 can be compelled to have an operation against their will if it is for their own good. Their may be some exceptions. I do not think many people would advocate forcible abortion for an underage girl even if she was raped and decided she did not want an abortion.” several things can be said here.

First, you state that “a child under 16 can be compelled to have an operation against their will if it is for their own good”. This might be true if the child is five or six, but not if it is post puberty say 14 or 15 particularly if the surgery is intrusive and the condition is not life threatening. But these are precisely the situations abortion almost always occurs in.

But more importantly, I said that I think abortion is analogous in terms of the ability of a minor to consent to it. There may or may not be all sorts of differences between abortion and other procedures, as far as I can tell however the ability of a minor to consent to the procedure remains the same, this is because the ability to give valid consent depends on a persons neurological and psychological development, not on any features of the surgery per se.

Hence my argument is not threatened by cases which show differences between abortion and other forms of surgery, all I need is the position that it does not differ in such a way that it changes a persons ability to consent and it clearly does not.
.-= My last blog-post ..Madeleine on TV Tonight on Abortion & Parental Consent =-.

If notification was compulsory I doubt if many underage girls would insist on an abortion against the wishes of both parents.

If parental authority was not undermined by schools there would be less girls risking a pregnancy. When schools tell underage girls they will arrange an abortion without parental notification they encourage promiscuity.

Do you disagree? If so can you please tell me what is it about abortion that means that people can give valid consent to it at any age, when they cannot for any other surgery?
Is it perhaps that the issues of whether or not to have one are more simple and straightforward than they are for every other surgery ? Obviously the answers to these questions are clearly negative. If you know of some cultural or emotional factor that suddenly makes a minor capable of giving valid consent I’d be really interested to here about it.

“I see no reason why abortion should be treated differently from any other medical or dental procedure. ” – is a statement that almost no-one would agree with, on either side of the debate – so using it as a starting point is not going to convince anyone.

Well if I had said this in an absolute sense, meaning no different in any way at all you might have a point but I didn’t as noted above.

But if you want an argument from premises that both sides of the debate agree people who believe in legal abortion, typically say that they believe abortion should never be performed on someone without valid consent; moreover if we were not talking about abortion, they would typically also affirm that that a minor cannot give valid consent to medical procedures. So the basic premises I am employing here are not hugely controversial even from a pro choice perspective.

” Strict logical consistency is often not the best tool for dealing with a complicated world.”

I take it when you say this you mean to refute ( and hence contradict) the claim that consistency is always the best tool for dealing with a complex world. If so it seems to me that you rejecting as false views inconsistent with your own.

How can you do this in such a complex world?
.-= My last blog-post ..Rangiora New Life College, Religion and Discrimination =-.

Same way it does in every other case where the procedure is some form of surgery other than abortion. Currently cases occur where one parent wants the child to undergo some medical procedure the other does not, the law already has procedures for addressing cases like this.

In my view parents not only be notified in the case of abortion but also is a girl wants to go on the pill. There is also a good case for parental consent for so called sex education

I agree in fact I would make the same line of argument, given parental consent and notification is needed for all other forms of medication and a child is recognized by law as lacking competence to make medical decisions in every other case why the exception in this case.

For example under current law any intercourse with a minor is rape, children up till a certain age are seen as incapable of being able to make valid decisions viz a viz sex, so the question that needs to be posed is this? Do they agree with the law in this regard, if no then they should decriminalize pedophilia, which they would never do. If they do then why do they think the same child is capable of making a decision about whether to have protected or unprotected sex? How can the same person be incapable of making decisions about whether to have sex but also able to make decisions about sex?
.-= My last blog-post ..Rangiora New Life College, Religion and Discrimination =-.

Consent needs to be given for a minor to have paracetamol or a wart removed through to major organ transplants, heart and brain surgery. Sometimes the reason the minor needs medical treatment is a result of abuse, when that appears to be the case there are procedures in place. So why does contraception, birth control & abortion get treated differently?

I think if we simply removed the ring-fencing of the laws around these things and handed the default control back to the parents, in the same manner the parents have default control for medical treatments over their children currently, we’d have a much better, fairer and just system.

How would a law that required consent work if parents disagree whether they are living together or apart? As far as I know an operation only requires the signature of one parent if they are not living together.

In my view parents not only be notified in the case of abortion but also is a girl wants to go on the pill. There is also a good case for parental consent for so called sex education based on harm minimisation.

Well surely that makes it even more important that parents be informed, after all, they are the ones who will be left to deal with the cultural and emotional consequences that aborting an unborn child will have upon their daughter and their family.

Matt is philosophically trained, I am philosophically influenced so we are focused on the former in our arguments. I think it is best to have a conversation at that level so that you are clear as to what and where precisely you are compromising when you contemplate actual policy.