Yet one more reason many conservative women refuse to use the term feminist.

Erik blogged earlier this week about the case of a 13-year-old Pennsylvania girl who was impregnated by a 30-year-old and coerced into aborting her baby herself.

Normal people look at this and see a whole bunch of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.  You've got a little bit of everything here--rape of a minor, coerced abortion, an "at home" abortion, barely-involved parents, etc.

But what's the only issue, according to The Frisky?  Pennsylvania has a law which says that minors, in order to have an abortion, have to have parental consent.  That's the real problem with the whole story:

It’s not hard to see how the fact that this 13-year-old girl needed parental consent for an abortion — which likely would have tipped them off to her 30-year-old friend/rapist — could have led her to do it herself. The silver lining is a sexual predator has now been arrested. But still, the fact that a teenage girl in America in 2010 believed she had to give herself a “back alley abortion” in a country where we have safe, legal ones absolutely makes me sick.

I've got a couple of problems here. 

For starters, it's assumed--again--that a thirteen-year-old would want an abortion at all.  Possible, yes, but not a lock.  Thirteen-year-old girls--I was one, remember--tend to be silly and romantic and all about babies.  It's at least as likely that she would have wanted to have and to keep that baby, especially if she fancied herself in love with her rapist. 

But again, no one's concerned with whether a decision was reached honestly and knowledgeably, so long as it's the decision they feel is right. 

This shows, among other things, a startling lack of knowledge of sexual abuse.  This girl was thirteen.  There is a reason that age of sexual consent laws exist.  It's because, before a certain age, people (male and female both, but the theory that boys can't be sexually abused is another topic for another time) simply do not possess the necessary decision-making skills to decide to have sex.  It's because young teens and preadolescents are easily led into making poor decisions.  This is something which should be a no-brainer to anyone who was ever that age, which of course is all of us.

This girl was RAPED.  Probably often.  By someone more than twice her age.  Who undoubtedly knew that what he was doing was illegal, because, c'mon, eighteen-year-old men barely qualified for that noun know it's bad juju to risk fucking their fifteen-year-old girlfriend.  Typically, people don't want to get caught and prosecuted for crimes they commit, right?  The fact that he buried the baby's body in the woods also hints that he knew what was going on was wrong.

So, let's put on our thinking caps here.  Which is more likely?

Scenario A: The 13-year-old in question had the decision-making skills of a grown woman, was in a normal relationship with someone who just happened to be over twice her age (she's quite mature, remember), accidentally conceived, and after great consideration decided--halfway through her pregnancy--that an abortion was really her best course of action.  She would have gone to Planned Parenthood for the "termination" but for the fact that PA's draconian laws prevent her from choosing to undergo a procedure that's no more serious than having a tooth pulled.

or

Scenario B: The 13-year-old in question was pressured into killing her baby by a sexual predator insistent on covering up his crime.  Evidence for this?  The baby was at least 20 weeks gestation (that's when it changes from being a miscarriage to a stillbirth), and the man who was responsible buried the remains in the woods.

C'mon, people.  Are feminists no longer allowed to use their brains?  Are we now to overlook sexual abuse in the name of self-determination?  Give me a break.