THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 8, 1996 TAG: 9603080555
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LORRAINE EATON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
When it comes right down to the moment, the complicated moment when teenagers decide whether to have sex, or have unprotected sex, or protected sex, or no sex at all, one thing that they wouldn't be thinking about any parental notification requirement.
Laura Neff, a 15-year sophomore at Lake Taylor High School in Norfolk, estimates that 95 percent of the teenagers she knows are having sex. She knows girls who have had babies - one of her friends delivered Monday night. And she knows girls who have had abortions this year. ``Seven, exactly,'' she said.
But like many Hampton Roads teenagers interviewed Thursday, just hours after the state Senate passed a parental notification bill, Neff had little faith that such a measure could change her peers' sexual behavior or decrease abortions.
Instead, Neff agreed with several high school and college students interviewed for this story and worried that ``a lot of people will start sneaking around to do it illegally.'' Other students said girls would just go to neighboring states to get abortions.
Under the bill, which was defeated on a procedural matter in the House, doctors would have been required to notify the parents of young women under 18 who wanted abortions, before the procedure. Doctors could have ``overridden'' the reporting requirement if the girl said she had been abused or neglected, and the doctor had reason to believe it. Or, the patient could have gone to a judge to bypass notification.
Ember Dawson, 17, a senior at Maury High in Norfolk, knows three girls who have had abortions and does not think that the law could change sexual behavior or reduce the number of abortions. ``Not at all,'' she said emphatically. ``In the heat of the moment, no one is going to think about what authority wants them to do or what their parents want them to do.''
Ryan Quinn, 18, a senior at Cox High in Virginia Beach, supported the bill, and he agreed: ``When the time comes, the bill won't come to the guy's mind. For the guy, it's not going to be that way, but for the girl, she'd probably think twice about it.''
Although the bill has been debated in Virginia's General Assembly for years, support for it among local teenagers is at a four-year low, according to The Virginian-Pilot's annual survey of high school seniors. About 16 percent of 420 local high school seniors supported parental notification laws in the 1995 survey. In the class of '92, 20 percent of teens were pro-notification.
The young people had ideas very different from lawmakers' about what might work. One Norview High senior suggested requiring notification for a minor seeking a second abortion. An ODU freshman said the bill should require that the guy's parents also be told.
And Darlene Davis, 19, a sophomore at Virginia Wesleyan College, wishes lawmakers had put money in the budget to hire people to counsel pregnant girls, people who would not ``push them either way.''
Davis knows girls who have faced an unwanted pregnancy and did not tell their parents. ``Kids who feel comfortable enough with their parents to tell them are lucky,'' she said. ``That kind of relationship is uncommon today.'' MEMO: Correspondent Luis Parades contributed to this report.
KEYWORDS: ABORTION PARENTAL NOTIFICATION by CNB