Liberal Media Can't Dispute Common Sense of Parental Notification

This morning was my first interview with the liberal media on Prop. 73, the Parental Notification Initiative. The interesting part was that they could not discredit the initiative, so they went after those of us who support it.

The interview was with Stacy Taylor, a local morning show host on AM 1360, San Diego's Air America affiliate. Suprisingly, Taylor was in favor of the initiative. To him, it just made sense that parents should know if an invassive medical procedure is going to be performed on their minor child.

But his co-host was not so reasonable. He spent most of the interview decrying my prolife stance, declaring this to be part of the vast right wing conspiracy to deprive women the right to abort their babies and accusing me of trying to legislate morality. And needless to say, any attempt answer his obviously loaded questions were shouted down as soon as he didn't get the response he wanted. For example, he refused to believe that both Senators Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have stated publically that they support parental notification. He had no answer when I pointed out that in1987 a Democrat controled California Legislature passed parental consent legislation that would later be upheld by the California Supreme Court. (The court would reverse itself less than a year later after replacing a judge who supported parental rights with a more radical supporter of abortion.)

Stacy and even some of his callers seemed to have a heartfelt desire to understnd the issue. But they also had a hard time getting passed the fact that it was members of the prolife movement who were the biggest supporters of 73.

I tried to explain that abortion is such a politically charged and divisive issue that whenever one concedes that the other side might have a valid point, they are attacked and branded as a traitor. He asked why I, an obvious supporter of restrictions on abortion was on with him instead of someone who was prochoice. At the time I didn't have an answer for him except to say that 40 percent of prochoice voters polled said they supported parental notification.

But later it came to me that the reason why prochoice advocates were so quiet in their support is because they don't want to be ridiculed and berated by their liberal friends. One only listen to the visceral hatred spewed from Park's sidekick and a number of his callers to know that rational discourse is not possible with many on the extreme left (or right for that matter.)

Anyway, I think if those on the left look at this initiative with an open eye they will see that it os just common sense. I don't know Stacy Parks well but he seems to be willing to do that.

Craig DeLuz

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(Please forgive the typos!)