In this statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its position that the rights of adolescents to confidential care when considering abortion should be protected. Adolescents should be encouraged to involve their parents and other trusted adults in decisions regarding pregnancy termination, and most do so voluntarily. The majority of states require that minors have parental consent for an abortion. However, legislation mandating parental involvement does not achieve the intended benefit of promoting family communication, and it increases the risk of harm to the adolescent by delaying access to appropriate medical care. This statement presents a summary of pertinent current information related to the benefits and risks of legislation requiring mandatory parental involvement in an adolescent’s decision to obtain an abortion.

The paradox of judicial bypass proceedings.

The adolescent's right to confidential care when considering abortion

As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion. This chapter argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision-making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears. A closer look at the law’s apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars have overlooked. The chapter compares the full spectrum of minors’ reproductive rights and unmasks deep similarities in the law on adolescent reproduction – in particular an undercurrent of desire to punish (female) teenage sexuality, whether pregnant girls choose abortion or childbirth. It demonstrates that in practice, the law undermines adolescents’ reproductive rights, whichever path of pregnancy resolution they choose. At the same time that the law thwarts adolescents’ access to abortion care, it also fails to protect adolescents’ rights as parents. The analysis shows that these two superficially conflicting sets of rules in fact work in tandem to enforce a traditional gender script – that self-sacrificing mothers should give birth and give up their infants to better circumstances, no matter the emotional costs to themselves. This chapter also suggests novel policy solutions to the difficulties posed by adolescent reproduction by urging reforms that look to third parties other than parents or the State to better support adolescent decision-making relating to pregnancy and parenting.

Teenage Pregnancy, Parenting, and Abortion: Legal Limits on Adolescents’ Reproductive Rights☆

This article elaborates on and critiques the law’s separation of pregnancy, with rights grounded in sex equality under Title IX, from reproductive control, which the law treats as a matter of privacy, a species of liberty under the due process clause. While pregnancy is the subject of Title IX protection, reproductive control is parceled off into a separate legal framework grounded in privacy, rather than recognized as a matter that directly implicates educational equality. The law’s division between educational equality and liberty in two non-intersecting sets of legal rights has done no favors to the reproductive rights movement either. By giving a formal “right” to stay in school and the right to equal treatment with temporarily disabled students, Title IX may be strategically deployed by proponents of restricting abortion rights to minimize the educational consequences of involuntary motherhood. The hard realities of how pregnancy and parenting impact schooling are obscured.

The article explores the legal divide between pregnancy discrimination and reproductive rights in relation to education in three parts. Part I discusses the rights included in, and omitted from, Title IX relating to pregnancy and reproduction. Part II surveys the liberty-based reproductive rights framework for pregnancy prevention and termination and discusses its limits in protecting young women from the educational effects of unwanted pregnancy and motherhood. Part III concludes by discussing the implications of separating out pregnancy discrimination from the broader set of reproductive rights and elaborating on the harms that flow from the law’s failure to recognize the educational equality dimensions of the denial of reproductive rights.

Reproducing Inequality Under Title IX

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The paradox of judicial bypass proceedings.

Citations

The adolescent's right to confidential care when considering abortion

Teenage Pregnancy, Parenting, and Abortion: Legal Limits on Adolescents’ Reproductive Rights☆

Reproducing Inequality Under Title IX

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