On May 27, 2014 signatures are due for the California Parental Notification for Abortion Initiative. Assuming that supporters of the initiative are able to collect the requisite 807,615 signatures, the proposition will be placed on the 2014 California ballot. If passed, minors across California would be required to notify a parent before recieving an abortion.

For many young girls, notifying a parent about her abortion leads to domestic abuse, bodily harm, or expulsion from the home or family. Lorie Chaiten, director of the Reproductive Rights Project for the Illinois ACLU, explains, "We see young women who have been beaten and kicked out of their homes; young girls who have seen older sisters kicked out, whose families would force them to carry to term because of religous beliefs. These fears are quite real." What's more, studies show that abortions performed in the first trimester of pregnancy are actually safer than childbirth, especially for young girls. As the Guttmacher Institute reports, the risk of death from childbirth is "about 14 times higher than that from abortion", and only about 4 in 1,000,000 girls die from abortion in the first trimester. Parental notification laws not only steer young girls away from safe ways of ending a pregnancy, but they also delay abortions to the third trimester when abortions are significantly more expensive, riskier, and more dificult to perform.  

Although all similar propositions in California in the past have been defeated, the most recent proposition in 2008 for parental notification was defeated by a narrow margin, 52% - 48%. A 2011 Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans supported parental consent laws. Though this number may be slightly higher or lower in California, it still shows that there is a large majority who support consent and notification. Based on the fact that the margin of defeat was so slim in 2008 and that support for parental consent is so high, it seems plausible that a 2014 ballot initiative that enacts parental notification could pass. For that reason, it is imperative to make sure that parental consent/notification supporters are not able to gather the number of signatures necessary to place the initiative on the ballot. Stopping this from happening would ensure that California would remain a state in which teens could receive abortions without consent or notification.

Encourage your friends and family to NOT sign petitions for the California Parental Notification for Abortion Initiative. This potental law is unsafe for our state's young girls, and we need to stop the initiative before it reaches the ballot.  

Spread the word by "liking" the Facebook page against the California Parental Notification for Abortion Initiative: https://www.facebook.com/noparentalnotification