While some parents are throwing their support behind the measure, opponents — such as a group of Asian American community workers and medical professionals who protested Prop 4 this week — warn of the ramifications that would affect pregnant minors.
The Chronicle quotes Dr. Sophia Yen of Lucile Packard Children's Hospital:
"This law is very misleading. Rather than tell their parents, young people will buy Internet drugs to end the pregnancy, they will go to Mexico for an abortion, they will throw themselves down the stairs, they will do desperate things."
SF Bay peninsula newspaper The Almanac also says that Senator Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo and a team of health officials from Stanford Medical Center and the ACLU also oppose Prop 4, saying, "We hope that she [pregnant minor] can make that decision with her physician rather than force her to look at inappropriate or illegal ways of termination."
I'm glad that Asian Americans are taking a vocal stance for reproductive rights. But I wonder where the support for Prop 4 lies in the AA community? If you recall Harry's post on 57% of Asian American voters opposing California's gay marriage ban, it seemed like a great indicator of AA's views on equality.
But of course, there's always that 43%. There are AA supporters of the ban like the Family Keepers (check them out on Disgrasian's blog).
So now I'm on alert and wondering where the AA supporters of Prop 4 are. Are they hanging with the Family Keepers? Are they AA voters with teenage kids? In the Almanac article, Sen. Yee says that Prop 4 is especially important for AA households where "parents have a difficult time speaking openly about pregnancy and sex, and girls might be scared of defaming the family name so they would go to extreme lengths to keep it from their parents."
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