Imagine that you are the parent of a 17-year-old girl who becomes pregnant in her junior year of high school. She is scared to death, in part because she is fearful of how you will react if she tells you. Which do you prefer:

(a) That she tell you nothing about it and decide whether to abort based on the advice of abortion clinic counselors and/or the boyfriend who impregnated her? Or,

(b) That she allow you to help her in her time of need?

Sadly, in California the current law permits, if not encourages, result (a). Proposition 85, known as Parents Right to Know, would change this by requiring notification of the parent(s) or guardian(s) of a minor 48 hours before she obtains an abortion, unless she obtains a judicial bypass based on clear and convincing evidence of either her maturity or that notification is not in her best interest.

Proposition 85 is not about outlawing abortion. It does not outlaw abortion for any adults and abortion would still be permitted for minors who have parental consent. Rather, it is about parents being allowed to be there for their children when their children are in crisis.

A child who becomes pregnant and is considering abortion faces a decision that, whichever way it is made, will change her life forever. At the same time, the child is prematurely confronting, probably for the first time in her life, a very serious "grown-up" problem and is under enormous stress. It is hard to imagine when a child would need her parents more. Proposition 85 ensures that her parents can be there for her in her time of crisis and that they can provide loving support when it is needed most.

Under current law, school counselors may arrange for a minor's abortion without her parents' knowledge. In other words, the child's school counselor effectively supplants the role of parents with regard to the enormously difficult problems that a child's pregnancy may pose, in a matter that has far-reaching implications for the child's life. Without parental consent the school cannot give a child an aspirin, yet it can arrange for her to have an abortion.

Older men who prey on teenage girls are prime beneficiaries of the present "don't ask, don't tell" law governing minor children and abortion. Consider what might happen if your 17-year-old daughter were impregnated as the result of a statutory rape by a man in his 20s --- a man who, no doubt, would be strongly inclined to cover up his crime by hustling your daughter off for an abortion. In two-thirds of the 46,000 school-age pregnancies in California annually, the father is adult male. The mean age of the father in teenage pregnancies is 22.6 years.

Critics of Proposition 85 argue that it will subject some children to abuse by their parents. However, Proposition 85 itself addresses this issue by establishing a "judicial bypass" for children when notification is not in the child's best interest. The problem of parental abuse, while it certainly exists, involves a relatively small minority of cases and should not drive policy that governs the vast majority of parents who are not abusive. Proposition 85 provides an appropriate balance by serving the majority while including judicial by-pass provisions for special cases.

Proposition 85 is well within the political mainstream: 36 states have enacted similar parental notification laws or more stringent parental consent laws. Indeed, in 1987 California enacted a parental consent law that, in 1996, was upheld by the California Supreme Court. However, before the Supreme Court case became final, two Supreme Court Justices were replaced and, in a highly unusual and controversial legal maneuver, the reconstituted Supreme Court "changed its mind" and struck down the law under the California Constitution. Accordingly, Proposition 85 is now necessary to amend the California Constitution so as to explicitly allow a parental notification law.

It is time for California to join the majority of other states in the nation that have saner policies concerning children and abortion. Please vote "yes" on Proposition 85 Nov. 7.

Daniel Mansueto is the Respect Life Co-Ordinator for Deanery 13 and president of the Board of Directors of the East Los Angeles Pregnancy Center. He is also an attorney and a member of the St. Paul the Apostle Church in Westwood.