I am going to stand by, with my Pocket Constitution in my pocket, and allow this to continue.

"...about allowing a child to undergo a violent and tragic medical procedure that can cripple her emotionally for life!"

I'm sorry, I forgot that someone else knows how to make decisions about MY BODY and MY EMOTIONS better than I do.

(Of course, I'm not a woman, but my point is there.)

Not only that (unless the law has changed) - in Washington State anyone over the age of 13 can consent to or deny their medical treatments! And keep it all confidential from Mom & Dad!

Woo hoo! Liberty!

My favorite line from the linked story:

Jill says her daughter, a pro-life advocate, was given a pass, put in a taxi and sent off to have an abortion during school hours all without her family knowing.

Yeah, um, she went to medical professionals seeking medical help. They helped her. It seems all they did to me is undertake their professional duty with competence, respect, and appropriate discretion.

Similarly, the educational professionals in "the government" are concerned about studies that indicate that they're failing to adequately educate individuals about the science regarding healthy eating decisions. They realize that the information they provide in the classroom will not be learned or even seem relevant to their students if they also educate them in the lunchroom that purchasing unhealthy foods is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. In order to avoid continuing this professional failure, they have stopped teaching one lesson that is inconsistent with the prevailing science.

It seems like a case of professionals doing their jobs competently, and in a manner consistent with their trade in both cases. You think we'd encourage that in our society, but alas....

Anyway, no one is talking about banning unhealthy foods from society. The fact he's trying to even remotely link these two things seems insane. Did Glenn Beck do another one of his paranoid psuedo-schizophrenic rants on taking candy and sugar out of school diet offerings? This seems like a leap that'd only make sense in the twisted mind of Glenn Beck.

in Washington State anyone over the age of 13 can consent to or deny their medical treatments! And keep it all confidential from Mom & Dad!

Good. Parents shouldn't be allowed to force their terminally ill teen into useless medical treatments. It's all too easy to force painful treatments on someone else.

Not to worry - this could never happen under Obamacare.

I admire a school system that takes such a strong stand for the personal rights of young people in the face of inevitable parental complaints. It's rare to acknowledge that high school students are people and not the property of their parents when the parents have far more resources for making your life difficult.

Hutch: Learn your history. Washington had a parental or husband consent law in 1970. It was nullified by SCOTUS rulings and repealed in 1991...6 years after he founded Antioch.

Gee, where WERE you when this was being debated?

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?Dis…

Liberal kids have liberal babies, usually. And most people who would quietly accept or seek an abortion? Totes liberal.

I can't see how forcing the birth of liberal babies would work toward Hutch's favor, unless he wants to forcibly indoctrinate them.

First, the school doesn't even run the clinic. It's run by an outside provider (Swedish).

Second, what kind of a relationship does this mother have with her daughter if her daughter has to hide this kind of information from her mother? If her mother had wanted to maintain a relationship with her daughter, she should have been telling her, starting around age 5, that her daughter could tell her anything--anything--and that her mother would be supportive and helpful. Why do I get the feeling that she's a judgmental shrew her daughter feels extremely uncomfortable around?

I feel so sad for that daughter, thinking of her taking that lonely cab ride and afraid to confide in her mother. She will be haunting my thoughts for awhile.

Let's get our Attorney General on this right away. He's all about policy, NOT politics...

Having a mother like that could emotionally scar her for life.

@9- That's some fine trolling, but I'm not gonna take that bait.

But it's very tempting.

Did the girl actually have an abortion? Or did she just get sent to a clinic after taking a pregnancy test? It seems like the entire story is coming out of the mother's mouth. Something about this smells like a stunt.

I still don't understand why The Stranger indulges this bigotted asswipe.

Yay Ballard High!!!

Thank you for sticking up for a student's right to a perfectly legal medical procedure, and protecting her doctor/patient confidentiality.

Hutch: shut the fuck up.

How many people has the Catholic Church murdered over the past 2000+ years?

As if having a baby at 15 isn't going to scar her for life?

@12: Many conservative have liberal babies too. He mainly just wants to control women, I think.

"Jill" says, "Makes me feel like my rights were completely stripped away."
So, exactly which rights are those? Seriously.

#13 the mother/daughter relationship does not seem too good. The news has what looks like a prom picture with the daughters face fuzzed out. It would not be too difficult for the kids at Ballard High to figure out who that girl is. Basically the "pro-choice" mom has outed her 15 year old daughter for having an abortion.

Please understand, the mother signed the consent form that every parent signs if they want to allow their child access to the high school Teen Health Center. While it doesn't reference abortion, it does reference reproductive issues. This was not just the girl making the decision; her mother give permission for her to go to the clinic and find out her options which she did and then enacted one.

I can see the mom being upset but she should look in the mirror first.

Trouble is, Hutch is right. Girl's 15. It's an elective medical procedure. The parent should be involved.

Trouble is, Hutch is right. Girl's 15. It's an elective medical procedure. The parent should be involved.

#27 Yes the parent should usually be invovled but somtimes it is best that they are not. That may be the case here. She raised doubts about her credibility by releasing a photo of her daughter to the press whose face was fuzzed out but can still be identified.

Of course, in a perfect world, the parents should be involved, but unfortunately, there's a lot of crappy parents out there.

I knew a girl in high school who got pregnant by her horrible step-brother (who was a real sociopath, and has since died in an armed robbery attempt, but not without leaving several offspring by several different women).

Since her psychotically religious step-father was knocking her mother around on a regular basis, and Good Old Mom had decided that that was what God wanted for her, she didn't feel like she could go to either of them. Luckily, she was able to get an abortion. If she had told them, they would have literally killed her.

So yes, in that perfect world, parents should always be informed. But in that perfect world, there wouldn't need to be a law to enforce that.

@ 20,
Not as many as it's raped.

@ All the other WA locals,
Sounds like another job for the mass support of a school district that behaved properly.

"A violent and tragic medical procedure that can cripple her emotionally for life" as opposed to the gentle and safe procedure of sticking a coathanger or a knitting needle past her cervix and performing a DIY D&C. Don't kid yourselves, folks, making abortions illegal never stops them. It just makes them deadly.

Oh, and if "Jill" is upset that she didn't know that her daughter was considering terminating her pregnancy, perhaps she needs to look in the mirror instead of going ballistic to a reporter; if your daughter isn't telling you things like that, you think maybe, just maybe, you might have made her feel insecure in confiding in you? Maybe even scared of confiding in you?