Mary Mostert
October 19, 2003
Abortion industry wants sexual abuse laws declared unconstitutional
By Mary Mostert

There is a law that has been on the books for at least 11 years in Kansas which prohibits sex with a child under 16, making a pregnancy in a girl under 16 evidence of child abuse. Title 42, Sec. 13031, of the US Criminal Code pertaining to Public Health and Welfare requires that doctors and other health professionals report “physical or sexual abuse or neglect of a child” to the proper government authorities.

In June of this year Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline issued a logical legal opinion that doctors who perform abortions on girls under 16 must report those pregnancies to authorities as instances of suspected child abuse.

Of 11,844 abortions reported in Kansas in 2002, 88 or 0.8 percent, were performed on girls 14 or younger, according to the State Department of Health and Environment. Since another 2,243 abortions, or 18.9 percent of the abortions performed were on patients aged 15 to 19, obviously there were at least several hundred abortions performed on girls under 16 that should have been reported to authorities as suspected child abuse, but were not.

According to the Dodge City, Kansas Globe Newspaper, Kline said a girl under 16 who is pregnant is a victim of rape, indecent liberties with a child or unlawful voluntary sexual relations, all felonies. He also said the reporting requirement exists even if the underage patient seeking an abortion is from outside Kansas. Last year, Kansas doctors performed 5,546 abortions, or 46.8 percent of the total, on out-of-state residents.

On the other hand the Center for Reproductive Rights and Aid for Women, which is in the abortion business, of course finds such law enforcement frightening. Early this month they filed a lawsuit demanding “action for declaratory and injunctive relief under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and 42 U.S.C. Paragraph 1983 against application of the reporting statute” for sexual activity of adolescents.

In fact, the complaint demands the court “prevent them (the State of Kansas) from enforcing the reporting statute in cases where Plaintiffs or other members of the Plaintiff class learn of sexual activity between a minor under 16.” That means that the Kansas department of social and rehabilitation services (SRS) which is responsible for investigating reports of child abuse should be prevented by the court from enforcing a law passed by the Kansas Legislature and the U.S. Congress to protect minors from abuse.

It is interesting to me to note that nearly every state in the union requires that both males and females be 18 years of age before they can get married without the consent of their parents. Yet, the abortion industry, especially the Center of Reproductive Rights, defines “adolescents” as “youth between the ages of 10 and 19” and claims those between the ages of 10-19 have the “right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents” (of the United Nations.)

Behind the current lawsuit designed to overturn the Kansas law that would protect girls 15 and under from sexual exploitation leading to pregnancy and abortion are United Nations documents such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Center for Reproductive Rights endorses the UN documents over the Laws passed by the legislature elected by the people of Kansas. They state on their website, “The Children's Convention's comprehensive approach to the right to health imposes upon governments the obligation to ensure adolescent girls' access to comprehensive reproductive health services (meaning abortion on demand). The Children's Convention also addresses states' obligation to ensure children's privacy, to ‘assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child.’ Full implementation of these provisions is highly relevant to adolescents' ability to determine their future lives, including when and whether to bear children.”

In Kansas that means that while you have to have your parents’ permission to get married younger than 18, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 12 and 13 year olds should have unlimited access to sex on demand without consulting with parents at all.

The Center for Reproductive Rights proclaims that “Adolescents are also concerned about privacy and confidentiality regarding reproductive health care. This is particularly important for unmarried adolescents who confront negative attitudes for being sexually active. Such attitudes only serve to alienate adolescents from seeking reproductive health care. These same adolescents also require access to contraception to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmissible infections, including HIV.”

The kind of “negative thinking” the Center wants declared unconstitutional would have prevented the deaths of nearly all the 27 million people who have died of AIDS around the world in recent years. It would have prevented the sharp drop in the average life expectancy in Sub-Sahara African nations and saved the lives of millions of orphaned children in Africa. What the center calls “negative thinking,” i.e. teaching young people to avoid sex prior to marriage, such as the Stay Alive Program and remain faithful to their spouses, has been the key to reversing the downward spiral of life expectancy in some African nations. In Uganda, which once had the highest AIDS’ rate in the world, now has one of the lowest in Africa with its people living longer, healthier lives because abstinence, not condoms, has been taught at the insistence of the Ugandan government.

Ironically, all that is really required to control the spread of AIDS in the world, since even the Center admits is being spread “predominantly through sexual relations” would be for nations to teach and people to live by the Boy Scout Oath in which individuals pledge to keep themselves “physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.” Those who keep themselves “morally straight,” usually are also mentally awake and thereby remain physically strong by avoiding promiscuous sex and therefore diseases such as AIDS. It’s really not all that complicated.

The real issue here is a massive movement on the part of people like the Center for Reproductive Rights to permit the sexual abuse of children, especially girls, in the guise of “reproductive rights.” We are supposed to be a nation of laws. In Kansas, both federal and state law REQUIRE that school and medical personnel report evidence of child abuse to law enforcement agencies. Certainly a pregnancy is a clue that there has been some sex going on.

The Center hopes to find a friendly federal judge who will support their cause — which, simply put, is to push early sex to keep a very lucrative abortion business going. And that, folks, in a nutshell is what is behind the determination of the abortion industry and its political supporters to prevent George W. Bush from appointing any Supreme Court or lower court Judge who is not a supporter of the abortion industry.

© Mary Mostert

 

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Mary Mostert

Mary Mostert is a nationally-respected political writer. She was one of the first female political commentators to be published in a major metropolitan newspaper in the 1960s... (more)

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