The University of California at San Francisco, one of the nation's foremost medical colleges, published a brief [PDF] about the efficacy of parental notification laws in other states. This is, of course, completely related to the upcoming Proposition 73 vote.

The brief, from the Bixby Center for Reproductive Health Research & Policy at UCSF, suggests that parental notification laws are not effective in curbing abortions, which is what they are designed to do.

The first argument in favor of parental notification laws is that they will force families to communicate (although if it says in any constitution that families must communicate, I'm hard-pressed to find it). The UCSF study suggests that notification laws don't increase communication:

A comparison of adolescents visiting abortion clinics in states with (Minnesota) and without (Wisconsin) notification requirements demonstrates that adolescents involve their parents in their decision at similar rates (65.3% and 62.1%, respectively). There is no evidence that a government mandate will positively increase the frequency or quality of communication for adolescents and their families.

Notification laws are also designed to delay the abortion process, something that can make the abortion more dangerous.

Perhaps most compelling is the suggestion that, in the absence of convenient abortion, adolescents will just travel to a state that doesn't require parental notification:

In the 20 months following the implementation of Massachusetts’ parental consent law, half as many minors obtained an abortion as had done so prior to the law’s implementation. During this same time period, more than 1800 minors (88% of the decrease in abortions) traveled to 5 neighboring states to have an abortion.

Not only does parental consent not significantly influence abortion numbers, it causes teenagers to travel out-of-state to seek abortions and causes them to delay abortions to the point at which the abortions are physically dangerous.