The rich want to spend their way into our California state Constitution.
For the third time in nearly as many years, Californians will vote on whether to have government-mandated parental notification for minors making abortion decisions. Voters have twice rejected nearly identical measures, defeating Proposition 73 in 2005 and Proposition 85 in 2006. This third bite at the apple is possible because Proposition 73, Proposition 85 and the current Proposition 4 have all been bankrolled by two wealthy men bent on buying a parental notice amendment to the California Constitution. Proposition 4 is an abuse of the initiative process.
Ironically, California's ballot initiative process arose as an attempt to wrest political power from those cash-flush special interest groups who alone could afford access to politics. Californians intended the initiative process to permit democracy by the many, not just the wealthy few.
San Diego publisher James Holman and Sonoma winemaker Don Sebastiani funded the two prior ballot initiatives that would have mandated parental involvement with abortion. Apparently, they will continue pouring money into anti-abortion initiatives despite repeated messages from Californians that we wish to protect our privacy and our teenagers' health. Holman and Sebastiani provided slightly more than $3 million of the total $3.8 million spent in favor of Proposition 85. As of June 30 of this year, Holman and Sebastiani had provided in excess of $2 million out of the $2.3 million spent in support of Proposition 4.
When two wealthy individuals repeatedly seek to amend the California Constitution they abuse the initiative process. This abuse is particularly troubling because it targets our state's founding legal document. Constitutional amendments are serious business. Once enacted, an amendment to our Constitution cannot be altered by the legislature, no matter how unworkable it turns out to be in practice. Proposition 4 would add 27 subsections of convoluted legal language to our Constitution, and would dictate such fine points as the type of mail service physicians must use to provide parental notice.
California's Constitution already speaks about reproductive freedom, succinctly declaring that all Californians possess certain inalienable rights including the "right to privacy" in reproductive decisions. Over a decade ago, the California Supreme Court concluded that the Constitutional right to privacy protects a minor's right to choose abortion. The court carefully canvassed the evidence from other states with parental involvement laws and found that these laws cause harm by creating delays that increase second-trimester abortions and by exposing teenagers to family violence.
Supporters of Proposition 4 confuse and trivialize the issue when they compare laws requiring parental notice for abortion to laws requiring parental consent for ear piercing, visiting a tanning salon or obtaining aspirin from a school nurse. Although we do mandate parental consent for many services provided to minors, California law does not in fact require parental consent or notice for teenagers who seek access to contraception, treatment for sexually transmitted infections or medical care for pregnancy and childbirth. We exempt reproductive healthcare from mandated parental involvement precisely because we recognize that failure to protect physician-patient confidentiality in this sensitive area will only hurt the teenagers we all seek to help.
As Californians understood in rejecting two similar initiatives before, Proposition 4 endangers teenagers' health. The vast majority of pregnant teens already discuss their decisions with a parent. The 27 paragraphs of legalese Proposition 4 would add to the California Constitution will not help scared teenagers and will only delay much needed healthcare for our most vulnerable youth.
Californians should send the message to James Holman, Don Sebastiani and others with deep pockets that our Constitutional rights are not for sale to the highest bidder.
