California voters on Tuesday rejected Proposition 85, entitled the “Parent’s Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative”, by a margin of 54.1% to 45.9%. In last November’s special election, a nearly-identical measure – Proposition 73 – was defeated by a slightly smaller majority of nearly 6%.

Proposition 85 proposed amending the state constitution to require that a minor girl’s parent be given written notice before she could obtain an abortion. It also imposed a 48-hour waiting period before the abortion could occur.

Liz Haas, the Director of Communications for Planned Parenthood – Golden Gate, didn’t relax until long after midnight, when election results from the Secretary of State’s web site indicated that Proposition 85 would fail.

“We’re just thrilled that California voters saw through this again and said ‘yes’ to protecting both teens and choice,” said Haas.

She thinks it is significant that the percentage of Californians who voted to defeat the initiative increased over last year, and she also notes that supporters of a parental notification initiative lost ground even in geographical areas where the support has historically been strongest.

The most recent Field Poll, released a week before the election, predicted that residents of inland counties would likely vote to approve the initiative, and residents of coastal counties would likely vote to defeat it.

While that prediction proved largely true, a sizeable number of counties in the middle of the state and along its eastern border voted to reject the initiative.

Albin Rhomberg, spokesperson for the “Yes on 85” Campaign, blamed “a general climate of dissatisfaction” for the measure’s defeat. He said that although supporters were disappointed that Proposition 85 failed, they saw great value in having the initiative on the ballot.

“We provided a lot of information to the citizens of California,” Rhomberg said. “There’s no better way to have a public policy discussion than by putting something on the ballot.”

And that’s a discussion that Rhomberg and Proposition 85 supporters intend to continue. The current plan is to make some “small changes” to the initiative and start working to put it on the June 2008 ballot.

Rhomberg “doesn’t read much into” the fact that the margin of defeat increased by more than 2.5% from 2005 to 2006. Noting that the vote was “reasonably close both times”, he also said that “about 75% of Californians support a parental notification law.”

He also credits opponents’ success to the millions of dollars groups such as Planned Parenthood invested in advertisements – particularly the “Bubble ad” that aired on television and the internet – although he described the ads as “misleading and deceptive.”

Those are adjectives that opponents of parental notification laws throw right back at the “Yes on 85” campaign. Liz Haas described the authors and major donors of Proposition 85 as “zealots” who are “comfortable abusing the initiative system” and whose real intent is to pass laws that will erode women’s rights to make reproductive choices about their own bodies.

Stating that it would make more sense to invest money into educating teens about how to avoid pregnancies in the first place, Haas also said that California voters – after facing this issue twice in the last twelve months – will not be fooled by proponents’ attempts to restrict abortion rights under the guise of protecting minor girls. She predicts that voters will grow increasingly tired of revisiting the issue of parental notification every time they vote.

“They’d be better off saving their resources for something else,” Haas said.