Senator Lott's Weekly Column: Protecting Children

SENATOR LOTT'S WEEKLY COLUMN: PROTECTING CHILDREN

Author: Senator Trent Lott

Just days ago, Mississippi's capital became a focal point of the abortion issue as hundreds of anti-abortion protesters descended on Jackson to picket the city's abortion clinic and other sites they contend support abortion. Many counter-demonstrators followed, and Mississippians saw first hand the kind of tense, passionate, placard board protests usually seen in Washington, D.C.

No matter what your position on abortion, there is one aspect on which most Americans should agree: Parents must have a say in whether their adolescent children can obtain an abortion. As a father and a grandfather, that's just common sense to me. Whether it's from online predators, from drug dealers and, yes, even from themselves sometimes, our laws must protect children until they mature, become adults and are capable of making informed, responsible and rational decisions. That's why all but a handful of states have adopted parental notification abortion laws.

The Child Custody Protection Act, which passed the Senate on July 26, ensures these laws' integrity. It prevents minors from circumventing parental consent laws and their parents by going across state lines for abortions. Mississippi requires that minors under 18 years have the consent of both parents or a judge's ruling before having abortions. Other states require the consent of one parent or a judge's ruling in any unforseen or unusual circumstances. Unfortunately some states have no laws requiring minors get either parental permission or a judicial ruling before having abortions. This is troubling considering that abortion is a major surgery which stops one life and forever changes another.

Some minors, mostly aided by adults other than their parents, have traveled to states with no parental notification laws to get abortions, leaving their parents completely in the dark. The Child Custody Protection Act criminalizes that practice, subjecting those who facilitate it to punishment. It says that if you are an adult other than a parent, transporting a minor across state lines for an abortion to avoid the state's law, you're subject to a jail sentence.

Abortion rights activist groups oppose parental notification and laws requiring it. They think a young teen is perfectly capable of deciding whether she should have an abortion. To be candid, they basically believe abortion should be available to anybody, anytime, anywhere and under any circumstances. That's why so many of them even support hideous late-term "partial-birth" abortions, too. But a solid majority of Americans believe there should be sensible restrictions on this very serious procedure.

There already are countless instances where our laws make a clear distinction between children and adults, recognizing that children are vulnerable and must be protected from making rash or wrong decisions. Recently in a well-publicized sting operation, the Hinds County Sheriff's Department caught about a dozen suspected child molesters. The sheriff was able to arrest these men because of laws designed to protect children - laws predicated on the self-evident truth that kids should be protected from bad choices that might forever scar their lives, including meeting strangers from online chat rooms. Parental notification statutes also draw an unmistakable line between minors and adults, protecting the child and the parents.

Whenever needed, we must vigilantly ensure that our laws expressly protect children and empower parents, grandparents, guardians and families. Parents should know if their child seeks an abortion. There are thousands of things we wouldn't wholeheartedly entrust to children without parental guidance. Abortion is surely one of them.

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