A study entitled, “The Effect of Parental Involvement Laws on Youth Suicide” conducted from 1987 to 2003, found that a law requiring parental consent before a minor can have an abortion correlated with a 11 – 21 percent drop in suicides among 15-17-year-olds. The research comes from the Center for Disease Control Mortality Reports and concludes the results “are consistent with the hypothesis that parental involvement laws…serve to protect young females from depression and what have been termed ‘stressful life events.’”
The Guttmacher Institute lists a chart of each state’s parental consent laws for abortion. Only three, Kansas, Mississippi and North Dakota, require both parents’ approval for the procedure, while in Minnesota both parents have to at least be notified.
Further evidence that a lower suicide rate is linked to parental consent laws for abortion are the statistics of suicide rates on StateMaster.com.
California, which represents 17.7 percent of all abortions in the United States, ranks as the unfortunate number one with 3,397 suicides. New York, representing another large portion of the country’s total abortions with 12.6 percent, also ranked in the top five with 1,169 suicides. Meanwhile, Kansas, Mississippi and North Dakota, the states in which young women face the obstacle of obtaining parental consent before having abortions, showed significantly fewer suicides.
Not only is abortion in California easy to obtain, it is easy to find as well. There are a staggering 522 abortion facilities in the Golden State. With a total of 58 counties, this could mean nine facilities in each one. Combined with New York, more than a quarter of the country’s total abortions are concentrated in these two states alone.
The evidence suggests the states in which it is simplest to obtain an abortion are also the most mentally unhealthy.
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