Jim Holman, the publisher of The Reader, gave or loaned $1.3 million to help religious conservatives qualify a measure requiring minors to tell their parents before ending a pregnancy. It may go before voters if the governor calls a special election.

Now conservatives will turn their attention to gathering signatures to qualify another ballot measure – one to ban gay marriage and the current benefits offered to domestic partners.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the so-called Parents’ Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative would prevent minors from having an abortion until 48 hours after a doctor informed their parents or legal guardians, in writing. Minors would not need parents’ permission to terminate a pregnancy, as they do in 19 other states, including Arizona. California’s two other neighbors, Nevada and Oregon, do not have parental-involvement laws.

But minors seeking to go to those states to evade a notice law in California might subject themselves or their companions to a new federal law that makes it a federal crime to take a minor across state lines to seek an abortion.

To make this law a little more palatable to the majority of Californians who are pro-choice, the pro-life forces, masquerading as “parent rights’ advocates,” allow parents to waive the 48-hour notice. The initiative terms the two days as a “reflection period.” Doctors could also waive the notification if they deemed the abortion a medical emergency.

Minors afraid to seek parental consent could ask a juvenile court judge to waive the notification. The problem is that some judges, particularly those who are anti-choice, may require minors to produce proof that notifying parents would be detrimental to the minor. There are numerous cases now in Texas, for example, where judges make it all but impossible to obtain judicial bypass.

Pro-life forces have been trying to whittle away at the sexual privacy of minors for years. They have had success in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has generally upheld parental notice laws, so long as there is judicial bypass.

But the California Supreme Court has been bolder and has knocked down parental notice laws under the California Constitution’s privacy clause.

Life on the Ballot, the campaign committee for the measure, spent $1.3 million to collect more than 1 million signatures – 682,131 of which the California Secretary of State’s office estimated were valid.

The campaign was largely funded through big donations from Holman, Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan and Don Sebastiani, a Sonoma vintner. These men are likely to also empty their pockets to qualify the anti-gay marriage/domestic partner initiative.

A parental “notice” law like this one seems rather innocuous on its face. And the pro-life forces behind it would like us all to think it’s all rather innocent.

But it’s not. First, a minor who has been raped by her father shouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of having to wait two days while a doctor notifies her father that she’s seeking an abortion.

And for that reason alone, the California Supreme Court is likely to strike down this law, if the voters pass it. Ironically, when the California Supreme Court struck down the last so-called parental involvement law, Jim Holman spent thousands in a vain effort to oust two California Supreme Court justices who voted to strike down the law.

But just as important, this effort by Holman and the right wing is the first step to deny sexual privacy rights to us all. But they’re happy to target defenseless minors first. They can’t vote.

First, they want parental notice of an abortion. Second, they will want parental consent. Then parental notice and consent for sexually transmitted disease treatment and condoms, etc. Turn the clock back a hundred years and you get the picture.

So they have been trying to get state laws passed that would require schools to get parental permission each time anything related to sex or sexual orientation is discussed. Schools notify parents at the beginning of the school year and parents can opt to take their children out of those discussions.

The latest effort has been to require students attending Gay-Straight Alliance clubs to get parental permission before joining the club or attending meetings.