We Need Parenthood Notification In NV. My 2015 Testimony

Nevada Right to Life has a Facebook post on sex trafficking and the lack of a parental notification law the would force Nevada abortion providers to let a parent know that their child is seeking an abortion.  I hope you'll join in.  

This led me to look back at my testimony that I submitted to a Legislative committee on a parental notification bill in 2015, AB 205.  I submitted it because there was not enough time for me to present it.  We had too many speakers that day.  80 percent of Americans supported that legislation which undermines Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry's claim that we are the extremists.  80 percent support means that substantial numbers, if not a majority, of people who call themselves pro-life on abortion support a parent's right to know.  Here's what I wrote in 2015.  More to come.

Testimony of Don Nelson

President, Nevada LIFE

Assembly Judiciary Committee

Regarding AB 405

April 10, 2015

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, my name is Don Nelson.  I am from Sparks, Nevada and President of Nevada LIFE.  I am representing Nevada LIFE (Life Issues Forum and Education).  Nevada LIFE supports this bill. 

Abortion is an invasive surgical procedure with lifelong physical and emotional consequences.  Those consequences are more profound for teen and preteen girls.  Being pregnant as a teen or preteen girl is one of the most difficult and life-changing situations a teen or preteen girl will ever face.  When young girls cannot get an aspirin without parental consent, cannot get a tattoo, cannot go to an R-rated movie without parental consent, I am shocked that parental notification is not required for her to receive an abortion in Nevada.  This abandons teen and preteen girls to the politics of abortion and all the people who stand to benefit from her abortion without the protection of her parents.

Who are those people who stand to benefit?  She is a cash cow to the abortion clinic.  And if the father of her child is another teenager, the parents of the boy are likely to think it is in their son’s interest that the abortion happen to evade years of child support and the weight they think it will be on his future.  Then there is the sexual predator.  Sexual predators routinely use abortion clinics to cover up and continue their sexual crimes against teen and preteen girls because they know that abortion clinics almost never report their suspicions of statutory rape.  There have been plenty of exposes to substantiate the charge that abortion clinics do not report and do not want to know and will do the abortion in these circumstances anyway.

The long-term impact on teen and preteen girls from sex with adult men is staggering.  These girls are more likely to drop out of school, engage in dangerous sexual behaviors, become pregnant, run away from home, be lured into prostitution, abuse drugs or alcohol, end up on welfare, be estranged from friends and family, be in physically abusive relationships, become divorced, more likely to attempt suicide and more likely to have STIs.  This bill would be a powerful protection for families and children against statutory rapists-the sexual predators. 

She also needs her parents because when a teen and preteen girl goes for an abortion she’s likely to meet a salesperson who stands to benefit from selling her an abortion, not someone qualified and competent to counsel her.  Too many times she’s going to meet people who are unqualified to be working in a medical facility.  And too many times the abortionist is really the bottom of the barrel doctor.  Abortion doctors like Kermit Gosnell who ran a clinic that was too filthy to be a dog pound at which he maimed and killed women are too common in our country.  It was a police investigation that stopped Gosnell, not the abortion industry which knew all about him and which would even refer clients to him fully aware of his pathetic clinic conditions.  This is just one of many stories to show that neither society nor the young girl seeking an abortion can trust the abortion industry to protect her from rogue doctors and incompetent, unqualified people.  Nor can they trust the abortion industry to look out for her best interests. 

These are just a few reasons why it is absolutely necessary that we pass this bill now.  Society rightly holds parents responsible for their children’s well-being, especially their health care.  No one has the best interests of the child at heart like her parents.  Parents cannot fully exercise their responsibility to care for their child’s welfare if they don’t know.  Opposing this law deprives parents of their authority to be responsible.  It abandons girls to those who do not care and who will gain from her abortion.  Abortion politics should not get in the way of protecting teens.  They are not expendable for political purposes.

Please pass AB 405.  It is long overdue.