For decades, Congress has attempted to protect underage girls from being taken across state lines for abortions by adults who are not their parents or guardians.
They've tried but have not yet succeeded.
Bills making it a federal crime to transport these minors (the Child Custody Protection Act) have had votes since 1998.
The House approved the bill that year, and again in 1999, 2002, and 2005.
By that time the bill was known as CIANA (the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act), not only prohibiting the transport of minors, but requiring abortionists in the other state to notify parents in the state of origin.
The closest the bill came to passing was in 2006, when the Senate voted 65-34 to approve and the House voted 264-153.
But the House bill added an amendment Democratic senators didn’t like, so the vote on the final bill was 57-42, three votes shy of passing.
Priests for Life lobbied for every one of these bills but the Democrats in Congress have never been willing to take any action that might harm the abortion industry, even if it means putting the lives of the nation’s young girls — including their own daughters — in jeopardy.
We have another chance in current session of Congress to correct this national embarrassment.
H.R. 4964, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives this month by Reps. David Taylor, R-Ohio, Bon Onder, R-Mo., Mark Harris, R-N.C.
Passing this bill is even more important since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), in 2022.
Seventeen states offer significant protections for babies in the womb, while others offer few or no safeguards for these most innocent children.
For instance, Texas protects nearly all babies from abortion but two of the states with which it shares a border — Colorado and New Mexico — have no limits.
Those states don’t care if parents consent or even know about their daughters’ abortions, but Texas does.
We know that 155,000 mothers traveled to other states for abortion in 2024; almost certainly a significant number of these were underage girls.
Beyond abortion, the issue of parental rights has been supercharged in recent years thanks to the transgender madness consuming local school boards in some of the blue states.
Just last week, the East Grand School Board of Education in Colorado voted in favor of allowing students to use a "chosen name" at school without first getting parental permission.
Parents need — and have the right — to know what's going on with their children, especially if they are about to undergo a procedure with lifelong consequences.
"Our nation’s laws should protect our children from vulnerability, not open them up to coercion from oppressors trying to evade accountability from parents and the law," Rep. Taylor said in a press release when introducing the bill.
"As states like Illinois and California promote abortions and keep parents in the dark about their child’s health, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act would help put parents back in the equation while protecting both their child and the lives of the unborn."
It's not always a seemingly well-meaning aunt or grandmother transporting these vulnerable girls in the name of "choice."
A minor girl who is impregnated by an adult abuser can be taken to a state where there is no parental notification or consent requirement and forced by that abuser to have a secret abortion.
Her parents will never know what happened to their daughter and the abuser can continue his criminal acts, secure in the knowledge that the evidence of his conduct has been destroyed.
The bill also would be a powerful tool in fighting sex trafficking, where a trafficker now can depend on the secrecy of the abortion industry to facilitate his enslavement of young girls who become pregnant.
We cannot squander this opportunity to protect young girls and I believe the bill has a chance of passing this time, for three reasons.
Americans have awakened to the extremism of the abortion industry.
There is a new concern in the nation today for parental rights.
And in the era of the Dobbs decision, when states have more authority to restrict and prohibit abortion, this law makes more sense than ever.
With the Democratic Party more extreme than ever before, and a proven enemy both of the unborn and of parental rights, bipartisan support for this legislation could easily fail.
Yet it’s time to fight harder than ever to expose this radical agenda, and to provide protection for our daughters and granddaughters that has been denied for far too long.
Frank Pavone is an anti-abortion leader and national director of Priests for Life. Read Frank Pavone Reports — More Here.