A ballot measure in Montana to require parental notification before an abortion can be performed on a minor racked up a landslide win in last Tuesday’s election. Ballots are still being counted, but the measure is currently leading with 70.73 support among votes tallied thus far.
The ballot measure for parental notification was called Referendum 120.
Jeff Laszloffy, a former state legislator who now leads the Montana Family Foundation, told supporters after the campaign, “The passage of Referendum 120 reassures us that when we have a chance to go head to head against Planned Parenthood’s agenda, we can not only win – but win big.”
Laszloffy noted that Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups have spent millions of dollars in campaigns against parental notice ballot measures in California and Alaska, and that pro-life advocates in Montana were prepared for an intense battle.
“Here in Montana, we took nothing for granted. The latest campaign disclosure reports show that we were right to be concerned. Opponents of Referendum 120 raised and spent more than $300,000 in their effort to defeat parental rights. Planned Parenthood led the opposition. But other groups joined the fray: the ACLU, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and the National Abortion Rights Action League.”
Michael Pauley, the strategic consultant for the Referendum 120 campaign, said that Planned Parenthood repeated the same arguments that they’ve used to oppose parental involvement laws in California, Alaska, and many other states. “Planned Parenthood called Referendum 120 ‘dangerous and unnecessary’ and said it would result in teens being abused when their parents found out they were pregnant and considering abortion,” said Pauley. “But voters are finally becoming wise to Planned Parenthood’s deceptive tactics. There are 37 states with laws requiring parental consent or notice before abortion, and many of these laws have been in effect for decades. Yet Planned Parenthood can’t point to a single case anywhere in the country where a teen has been harmed because of a parental involvement law.”
Pauley was also the strategic consultant for a successful campaign to pass a parental notice law in Alaska in 2010. In the first year the law was in effect, the number of teen abortions declined 23 percent. Pauley said this reality points to another reason for Planned Parenthood’s zealous opposition. “It’s been clearly established through statistical research that parental involvement laws result in fewer teen abortions. Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the U.S., so these laws are simply ‘bad for business’ from their point of view. Fewer abortions means less revenue for those people who make a living by performing them.”
With the passage of Referendum 120, there are only 12 states left in the country that either have no parental involvement law on the books, or their laws have been blocked by court action: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont.
Pauley noted that half of these states allow some form of voter initiative process, and that pro-life leaders in these states should consider whether this is a viable option for enacting a law. “Alaska and Montana, traditionally considered ‘red states,’ have proven that these laws can pass at the ballot box, by comfortable margins,” said Pauley. “But there’s plenty of evidence that these measures can win even in blue states. The last time parental notification was on the ballot in California, in 2008, the measure won 48 percent of the vote – despite the fact that Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups enjoyed an overwhelming 15 to 1 advantage in funding during the campaign.”
The Baby killers are probably not the least bit worried about this because they can get a liberal “judge” to overrule it just as happened in Taxifornia!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
It is tragic that the 2012 campaign to qualify a California Parental Notification Constitutional Amendment in California was sabotaged and did not even get on the November 6 ballot!
With more than $60 million of the liberals’ and public employee unions’ money tied up in defeating PROPOSITION 32 which would have blocked these corrupt unions from extracting dues and fees from employees to advance the culture of death, the 2012 Parental Notification initiative would have had a good chance of passing.
By the new rules, which put Constitutional Amendments first, in order of their qualification, the 2012 Parental Notification Constitutional Amendment initiative would have been Proposition 30, the first Proposition on the November 6 ballot!
Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax increase initiative which barely qualified by the deadline would have been Proposition 31.
Parental Notification, Proposition 30, would have again been the subject of a great deal of media coverage and discussion and again exposed Planned Parenthood’s dirty secrets to California voters:
1. That Planned Parenthood wants to be able to perform secret abortions on girls as young as 12 years old, without a parent’s knowledge!
2. Planned Parenthood protects sexual predators by covering up their crimes with secret abortions!
3. Planned Parenthood aids, abets, and facilitates the continued sexual abuse and exploitation of young girls by providing birth control drugs and devices to the predators and their victims — paid for or subsidized with taxpayers’ money!
A Parental Notification initiative would save tens of thousands of California girls from sexual exploitation and reduce by thousands the number who suffer from sexually transmitted diseases and abortions each year.
When will California bishops and pastors become serious about protecting California young people from the abuse and moral corruption of Planned Parenthood and their Culture of Death allies???
This failure to protect young people from sexual abuse and moral corruption is a SCANDAL and a disgrace!!!
California is lost to the Church. I think the Church should focus on re-evangelizing itself, forget the public fights.
Part of evangelizing is to also have public fights as you call them.
This is a victory, but we must still continue to fight the anti-family agends. 25 years ago, I visited my relatives in Esse, Germany, and was shocked when a 14 year olf cousin was smoking. I asked her parents why they alllowed her to smoke, and they said when a child reaches a certain age, we the parents have no more authority over her. Naturally this goes againsdt the 4th Commandment when we are told to honor our father and our mother. The state has been trying to dissolve the family unit now for almost 100 years. God heard the cries and the prayers of the Montana parents, and hopefully more states will enact what God has willed since the beginning of creation.
A 14 year old and parents have no authority over her? They should leave Germany and take that child where they can have authority over her.
MKM, one German family did just that by seeking political asylum her in the USA, so that they could homeschool their children. Now that they are here in the US, they are afraid that this right will be taken away from them again. Thank you Fr. Karl for sharing your story.
Oh, and by the way, MKM. Parents here in California do not have the authority to prevent their 14 year old daughter from having abortion.
This is an example of nationalism vs family.
There’s the silver lining in this years elections.
How sad that the California bishops and their bureaucrats devoted most of their time and attention to working with the anti-Catholic American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to qualify the initiative to repeal the death penalty, and gave only a token nod to qualifying the parental notification initiative. Catholic Californians should think back to the one or two week-only effort that the California bishops allowed to collect signatures for parental notification even though there were several months available to gather signatures before the deadline. What is even virtually criminal is that the bishops told parishioners that they could not take the petitions home to get signatures from family and friends. Did the ACLU operate under such constraints? Of course not. Repeal of the death penalty is a “social justice” issue to them, more important than a “pro-life” (sic) issue. Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, there have been 13 executions in California. A rough estimate of the number of abortions in California since 1978 would broadly be 10,000,000. There have been close to 1,000,000 executions of innocent pre-natal babies per single execution of a person on death row. For whom is there justice? I believe that Parental Notification would have won if it had been on the 2012 ballot. Instead, thousands more girls under 18 will be “guided” by the monster that is Planned Parenthood and will suffer physical, mental, and spiritual pain and the death of their babies. The irony: Californians did not buy the propaganda of the ACLU and its cohort – the California bishops, and the death penalty was not repealed.
But just think of all the money that went to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU through the bishops’ cooperation with these two organizations. And the prestige of working with the baby butchering lawyers and politicians … We would not want our bishops suffering for lack of prestige, would we?
Parental notification must be on the California ballot again. Only 12 states still do not have Parental Notification and CA is amongst them.
Parental Notification to Protect to protect Underage Girls as a constitutional amendment must be passed in California.
Next time, do not rely on the Catholic bishops to help gather signatures.
count on us in the evangelical churches—because we really care!
If you put in an amendment to notify the parents of underage girls about her seeking an abortion, then you will have constitutionally validated abortion as a right.
Depends how the amendment is worded.
Montana Catholics were probably encouraged by their bishops and priests to support parental notification. Can the same be said for California? No way.
Laurette the church was pushing the end of the death penalty more than the parental notification. We all know the outcome now…thank God they lost to the ending the death penalty but it’s sad that they wasted time on that instead of helping parental notification to get on the ballet.
That is good news from Montana and one small step forward.
Praise God!