If you follow legislative initiatives in Florida and are prolife, you’ve probably noticed that the parental consent bill pass the FL Senate and now only needs to be approved by the FL House and then signed by Governor Desantis. Since the FL House passed an almost identical bill last legislative session and Governor Desantis has said that he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk, it looks like the parental consent bill is a done deal.
Most prolife/pro-family groups are thrilled that this bill will soon be law. The argument, which is a good one, is that minors have to have parental consent for every other medical procedure, including receiving an aspirin at school or having their ears pierced. Why should abortion be any different?
Personhood FL didn’t support the parental consent bill though. Here’s why we didn’t.
Personhood Florida’s primary focus is to re-establish the right to life for every innocent human being from the earliest biological beginning (which in most cases is fertilization) to natural death. While we work to abolish all abortion and protect every innocent human life, we do welcome bills that protect one or more classes of human life without exception and without specifically authorizing the destruction of human life in certain circumstances. In other words, we are willing to take steps that take us closer to that goal of protecting every innocent human life, but those steps must meet certain guidelines. These guidelines come from scripture. In subsequent posts, we will deal with each of these guidelines, but for now, we will show where the Florida Parental Consent for Abortion Act fails to meet these standards.
While we support removing the exemption for abortion from parental consent, this bill contains language recognizing the right of minors to kill their preborn children with their parents’ consent. In today’s society, too many parents encourage, pressure, and sometimes even force their pregnant daughters to abort (i.e. murder) their own grandchild! The bill also contains a judicial bypass that provides a means for a pregnant minor to obtain an abortion without parental consent by asking a judge to allow them to obtain an abortion without obtaining parental consent. As such, this bill would specifically allow abortion where parents consent or where an exemption to consent is obtained, and if Roe v Wade were overturned, this bill would legalize abortion when these conditions are met. This bill legislates evil by law which violates Psalm 94:20-21 and Isaiah 10:1.
The bill also allows for abortion in cases where “the petitioner is the victim of child abuse or sexual abuse.” In other words, the bill has rape and incest exceptions. We support punishing rapists to the fullest extent of the law, but we oppose punishing a preborn child with death for the crimes of her father. Deuteronomy 26:16 specifically prohibits punishing children for the sins of their fathers. Furthermore, since some minors seeking abortion are brought to an abortion center by their rapist and/or sex trafficker, the bill actually creates a scenario in which these exceptions help the rapist and/or sex trafficker cover up the pregnancy and therefore continue to rape the minor.
As the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat though (not that we want to skin any cats). As mentioned earlier, Florida law already requires parental consent for medical procedures but exempts abortion from that requirement. Simply removing the abortion exemption would accomplish the intended purpose without specifically authorizing abortion in certain circumstances and without punishing children for the sins of their fathers.
Personhood FL presented this option for Florida legislators, including the FL House and Senate bill sponsors and co-sponsors, in both the 2019 and 2020 legislative sessions. We also presented this option to prolife/pro-family leaders who support the parental consent bill, but our calls to apply biblical principles to this piece of legislation have been ignored.
- Please Pray that God would convict to the hearts of the legislators, their aides, and prolife/pro-family leaders of violating His righteous standards in legislation they support.
- Call your FL Representative and Senator and encourage them to defend all innocent human life without exception. (Find your FL Representative here and your FL Senator here.)
- Please join Personhood FL in defending all innocent human life, without exception by volunteering and by making a generous donation today.
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