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The Oregonian
Politicians and advocates have had their say on Oregon's Measure 43, which would require parents to be notified before a teen has an abortion.
Now listen to women whose lives were changed by teen pregnancy, and girls who would be most affected if the measure passes.
The women's stories are similar. So are their tears. But their views about whether Oregon should have such a law vary dramatically.
Terri Cole, 44, didn't tell her parents when she had an abortion at age 16. She waited more than 26 years to tell them. Her mom's reaction: "I wish you'd felt like you could tell us,' " Cole says. "My dad didn't say anything."
Cole, who lives in Gladstone, was "scared to death" when she found out she was pregnant, not wanting to disappoint her parents. Her boyfriend pushed for the abortion.
Today, Cole, who wears a cross on a delicate chain, says she does not think she was sufficiently mature at the time, and that's why she supports Measure 43. "I don't think a 16-year-old girl can make that kind of a decision," she says. "I think it affected how I felt about myself, my self-esteem and decisions I made about relationships."
She says it's hard to know whether she would have made a different choice if she had told her parents at the time. "But if I'd had the time to step back," she says, "maybe I wouldn't have" had the abortion.
Suzie McHarness, 50, of Southeast Portland, knows exactly what she would do differently, had it been possible. "If I had had an abortion, my life would have been very different," she says. That's why she opposes Measure 43.
Instead, McHarness says, she became pregnant at 15 and was forced to deal with an angry, abusive mother and shame from her mother's friends from church.
As the morning sun streams into her kitchen window and catches the tears pooling in her eyes, McHarness says she was raped at a party by a friend of a friend.
"I was devastated," she says.
She was afraid to tell her mother, so she waited until she couldn't wait any longer.
Abortion wasn't an option. It was 1972, before the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal. Plus, McHarness says, "my mother never would have agreed to that."
The baby was a boy, born with a facial defect. McHarness says she moved out of her mother's house. She dropped out of high school and struggled to raise her son on her own. He needed a series of surgeries, and McHarness remembers hitchhiking to the hospital to be with him.
McHarness decided when her son was 14 months old that their life was "horrible" and "unfair to him"; she gave him up for adoption.
The two were reunited 16 years later and are working on a relationship. McHarness keeps her son's picture on the wall beside her computer. She volunteers at least twice a month at a Planned Parenthood clinic, helping women and teens prepare for abortion and staying with them during the procedure.
Brenda Cochran, 40, of Southeast Portland will never forget the day she learned her daughter had had an abortion at age 15. "I thought, 'Let me find out who did this to my kid, and I'm going to sue them because I didn't think this was allowed,' " Cochran says years later. "My child could have come home and bled to death, and I would have never known."
Under Oregon law, a teen 15 or older can get an abortion without a parent's knowledge. And that's why Cochran is working to get Measure 43 passed.
Cochran, 43, and her daughter Felicia Bautista, now 20, were named chief petitioners for the measure. Their private story has become very public.
"We made a pact," Cochran says. "We don't want this to happen to any other girls."
Measure 43 is also a subject for debate among teenagers.
"The people who are going to be affected really won't be able to vote at all," says Sophia Sanders, 17, of Madison High School. A journalism class at Madison with sophomores, juniors and seniors is split about whether the measure should pass. One 15-year-old male ventures that teens living in their parents' homes should follow their parents' rules.
But most say it's a mistake to think that every teen comes from a supportive, two-parent family. And they agree a pregnant teen would figure out a way to have an abortion without telling her parents, even if Measure 43 becomes law.
Lots of teens get tattoos forging signatures on permission slips, they say. One girl says a friend got her nose pierced by walking around a shopping mall and finding an adult willing to be her "parent for a day."
"I love my family," says Kate Dedman, 16. "If I got pregnant and wanted an abortion and they found out about it, everything would be ruined. They would support me. Back me. But everything would be different."
Kaitlyn Barclay, a 17-year-old senior at Lake Oswego High School, started a "Defeat Measure 43 Planning Team" as part of a political action class. "I don't think government should tell a girl what she can and cannot do with her body," Barclay says.
Karen Elliott, 60, has spent more than 30 years as a public health nurse counseling Marion County teens facing unwanted pregnancies. It's not unusual, she says, to have a teen declare: "My parents are going to kill me."
And yet, Elliott adds, often the mother is there for the next visit. "She's not happy, necessarily, but she's there to support."
But not everyone is so lucky, and that's one of the reasons Elliott opposes Measure 43.
She's counseled many girls who come from abusive homes, as well as girls who sleep on friends' sofas because they have no home.
Elliott recalls a family with four daughters, an abusive stepfather and a man living in a backyard trailer who acted out scenes from his porn videos with the sisters. Elliott says she reported the situation to law enforcement after one of the girls confided in her. She worries that the girl might have kept the family secret if she'd known a law had required Elliott to tell the girl's mother.
It's a minority of teens who may be truly afraid or unable to tell their parents, Elliott says. "But I think they deserve to be supported."
