July 19, 2006 -- Women's Medical Group Opposes 'Teen Endangerment' Bills

The 13,000-member American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) this week called attention to two bills pending in the United States Congress that the organization charged will, if enacted, "endanger the lives of girls and young women." The AMWA has signed on to a letter to federal lawmakers urging them to vote against the Child Custody Protection Act (S. 403) in the Senate and the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (H.R. 748) in the House of Representatives. S. 403 would make it a federal crime for anyone other than a parent to accompany a young woman to an out-of-state doctor for abortion if the home state’s parental-involvement requirement has not been met; and H.R. 748 imposes a complex patchwork of parental involvement laws on women and doctors that the AMWA calls "both complicated and unconstitutional." The full text of both laws and their current status in Congress are available at http://thomas.loc.gov.