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Parental notification
Your editorial opposition to parental notification laws ("Don't nationalize the squeal rule," Oct. 24) sounds like it was ghostwritten by a journalism sophomore. "It would deter some teenagers from exercising their constitutional right to choose abortion" and "lead to an increase in family violence and an increase in botched abortions," you write.
What it might do instead is deter some teenagers from their constitutional right to botch up their lives by following the misguided advice of the "safe-sex" lobby.
Right now, adolescents can walk into a school-based clinic, whether or not their parents have signed a permission slip to allow it, and obtain birth control pills and condoms but nary a word about the physical and psychological hazards of "safe" sexual activity outside of a permanent, committed relationship.
There are a few bad parents, I admit, but the vast majority are good, and even those who have made bad mistakes almost always continue to have a deep commitment to their children.
It is the ultimate arrogance for you as "the media" to assume that you care more for the lives of individual adolescents (that you do not even know personally) than parents who have invested years and tears in raising them and in many cases would even be willing to die for them.
Ross S. Olson, Minneapolis.
Published 11/97
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