“For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.”
The NY Times analysis of states that enacted laws from 1995 to 2004 “found no evidence that the laws had a significant impact on the number of minors who got pregnant, or, once pregnant, the number who had abortions.”
Indeed in some cases, the abortion rate went up when these laws were instituted. “For instance, in Tennessee, the abortion rate went down when a federal court suspended a parental consent requirement, then rose when the law went back into effect. ” A similar rise in abortion rates was seen in Arizona and Idaho after parental consent laws were passed. Indeed, workers at abortion clinics say they more often see parents pressuring their daughters to have abortions than trying to stop them.