My 10-year-old daughter is fiercely independent and mature beyond her age. She whips up killer blueberry pancakes for my wife and me and sets the table like a pro. During movie nights, her questions about the plot line usually show that she understands the movie better than I do. She's always been a take-charge girl full of initiative. But she is just 10.
Every once in awhile, I become utterly overwhelmed by the privilege and responsibility I have as provider, protector and guide for her. Proverbs says that what we teach our children will "crown them with grace" and "clothe them with honor." My job is to instruct her to be wise and to help her to develop good judgment.
The challenge is that the older she gets, the more she becomes aware of my shortcomings. To be sure, parenting is a heady and humbling experience. This reality underscores the need to have public policies that support our role as parents rather than undermine it.
The Alaska Supreme Court decision declaring the Alaska Parental Consent Act as unconstitutional has done more than just strip away our fundamental right as parents to oversee our children's health. Our ability to govern ourselves through elected citizens we send to Juneau is being threatened.
Chief Justice Dana Fabe, writing for the majority, states that judges are not legislators, philosophers or policymakers. True. What's baffling is how she can determine that our constitution gives kids barely out of puberty the right to undergo any surgery without parental involvement. Denying parents the opportunity to be involved in a life-altering experience such as an abortion encourages alienation and isolation between parent and child when the child is in perhaps their greatest need for guidance and support.
You can debate about whether abortion is horrific or if it's simply a "procedure" that should be legal, restricted, rare or prevented. You can say it's a fundamental right every woman or girl should have anytime and anyplace and you can deny that it stops a beating heart. Well, actually you can't deny that.
What you can't dispute is that the supposed weakest branch of government, the judiciary, has been attempting to have the final say on today's politically charged issues like same-sex unions, abortion and how we raise our children. Those who wrote the U.S. Constitution, I believe, would be appalled at the power we've given the black-robed elitists.
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote that the "judiciary may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment, and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for efficacy of its judgments." Judges are under the rule of law. Period. Not in the business of making it.
This is not a pro-choice vs. pro-life debate. Had the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade, been involved, he would have likely upheld the Alaska Parental Consent Act as constitutional. The court of his era consistently upheld parental involvement laws as long as they included a judicial bypass as this law did. The last time the U.S. Supreme Court considered a parental consent statute, it ruled 9-0 that the law was constitutional. Yes. That includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Here in Alaska, a local physician who provided abortions in Palmer and who was the medical director of Planned Parenthood of Alaska, has stated on record that she doesn't provide medical abortions to girls ages 16 and younger because she doesn't believe they can handle the process without parental or other adult supervision. She also acknowledged the potential psychological consequences and refers 100 percent of her abortion patients to counseling.
Society accepts endless limitations on a minor's freedom of choice. Children can't choose to become licensed drivers, go on field trips, join sports teams or even lift weights at a local gym without a parent's direct consent. Most Alaskans should be outraged that the court has just thrown away the rights of parents to determine whether their daughters as young as 13 can undergo an invasive, irreversible surgical procedure that takes the life of their own pre-born grandchildren.
Jim Minnery is a Community Voices columnist. He is founder and president of the Alaska Family Council.
