13-Year-Old Girl Performs DIY Abortion With a Pencil

by Roxann MtJoy · 2010-06-08 06:53:00 UTC
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Do you support parental consent laws? You know, those laws that require minors to notify and, in some cases, get permission from their parents before getting an abortion?

I do not. Read this story and you'll see why:

A 13-year-old Pennsylvania girl has been hospitalized after attempting to give herself an abortion with a pencil. The girl had become pregnant from a 30-year-old man — Michael James Lisk — she refers to as her boyfriend, but whom I think we can all agree to call child rapist. This sexual abuse had been going on for about a year.

After the abortion attempt, the girl became very sick and eventually gave birth to a baby. The "boyfriend," Lisk, placed the baby in a plastic shopping bag and buried it in the woods. It is unclear as to whether the baby was stillborn or not. An autopsy is pending.

In my research for this story, I never found out anything about the girl's parents. Perhaps they were abusive themselves and she felt unsafe turning to them. Perhaps they were absentee parents and were not around for her to confide in. Perhaps they were controlling, judgmental, vindictive.

Or, perhaps they were loving, supportive, and approachable and their daughter was simply scared. Perhaps her parents were perfectly lovely people and she, for whatever reason, couldn't face them. Since Pennsylvania is one of twenty states that requires parental consent for minors to have an abortion, the girl felt that she must take matters into her own hands.

This young girl is an unfortunate poster child for abolishing parental consent laws. Never should any woman, let alone a little girl, feel that their only option is a pencil, for crying out loud. The government has no place putting up barriers between a woman and her right to make reproductive choices for herself.

Micheal Lisk has been charged with rape and concealing the death of a child. While that certainly is a good thing, he is not the only one who placed that 13-year-old girl in danger. Pennsylvania's parental consent laws put her in a horrible position, one in which she thought she could only escape by performing an abortion on herself. This is simply unacceptable. Please tell Pennsylvania lawmakers that it should not interfere with any female's private reproductive choices and to repeal harmful parental consent laws.

Photo credit: Daquella manera

Roxann MtJoy is a freelance writer who previously worked as a case manager at a domestic violence shelter. She is currently attending graduate school for theater in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

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