Dear Friend and Reader,
The term statutory rape offends me.
Rape is a violent, non-consensual sexual act committed upon an unwilling party. Statutory rape is de facto non-consensual sex because a person is under that state’s legal age of consent, and is therefore not of sound enough mind to make sexual choices.
When I was 16, I began my first year of college. Old enough for a philosophy class on contemporary ethics, but not old enough to have sex with Spyros, my 24 year old Greek friend who made me Turkish coffee one morning when I couldn’t get to sleep after the 6 am construction started outside my dorm room.
Now, one of my favorite organizations, Planned Parenthood, is being sued for failing to detect statutory rape when a 14 year old girl came in with a 21 year old guy (who said he was her step-brother) for an abortion. The girl is 18 now, and her parents are suing. Funny how the parents tend to be the ones complaining about underage sex, not the people who are having it. She could have had a four year old by now, if her parents were Sarah and Todd Palin, and the laws on underage abortions were tighter.
This lawsuit is mixing around while California is deciding on its parental consent rules. There will be a vote on California Proposition 4 on Nov. 4, deciding whether women under the age of 18 can have abortions without parental consent and a 48-hour stay.
As reproductive rights are predominately decided state-by-state, there are already states, some Arkansas and Colorado, that have limited access to lower income people by banning public funding of abortions.