Bristol's Choice

In announcing that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant last week, GOP vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin used this puzzling locution: "We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby." Pundits were quick to point out that Bristol's "decision" must have been at least somewhat constrained by her mom's position--as articulated in November 2006--that she would oppose an abortion for her daughters, even if they had been raped. Palin is an outspoken advocate of parental veto; she called the Alaska Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down that state's parental consent statute "outrageous." So what exactly, one wonders, was young Bristol permitted to decide?

John McCain led us through this same hall of mirrors in 2000 when asked what he would do if his then 15-year-old daughter, Meghan, were pregnant. "The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel," he said at the time. Yet McCain also says that "Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned," and told Tim Russert he favors "a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions." The GOP ticket may want to preserve the illusion that their daughters get to do the deciding, but the GOP platform would bar women from choosing to have an abortion, even if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. And McCain has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe.

There are legitimate reasons to differ over the morality of abortion. There is also a legitimate disagreement over the fitness of a 16- or 17-year-old to decide to terminate her pregnancy. But the GOP position on abortion not only treats teenagers as less than grownups, but also shows a growing inclination to treat grownup women as little girls. As important as the decision to end a pregnancy may be, the matter of who gets to decide may be even more so. And that decision is increasingly being taken out of the hands of women, and put into the hands of strangers.

In 1973, the Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade that the right of privacy "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." It was an announcement that women--in consultation with their doctors and subject to limitations--should be free to make this difficult choice themselves. When the court reaffirmed that principle in 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, it again acted to protect the liberty and autonomy of the women doing the choosing.

Today there is renewed doubt whether grown women are fit to decide to abort a pregnancy at all. That is why Sarah Palin would not allow abortion in the event of rape or a threat to maternal health, but only with a "doctor's determination that the mother's life would end if the pregnancy continued." That is not the mother doing the deciding, it's her doctor. Presumably if they differ on this question, the mother loses.

And as we drift further down the road from Roe, it's clear we don't trust doctors anymore either. That's why the South Dakota legislature forces physicians to read from a script before performing an abortion. Among other questionable declarations, physicians must now deliver the warning that abortion leads to an increased risk of "depression and related psychological distress" and "suicide ideation and suicide." As Emily Bazelon has reported, most doctors delivering this warning do not believe it, because it is supported by dubious data. Nonetheless, the law went into effect in July, suggesting that legislators, not doctors, know what's best for women.