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Q: Aren't parental consent laws designed to protect teens who may not know everything about their medical history and conditions? If you can't get your appendix taken out without a parent's or guardian's signature, why is abortion different?
13 May 2002
A: While it's true that people under age 18 need their parents' signature for most medical procedures, it has long been understood that when it comes to certain personal issues, such as contraception, prevention of sexually transmitted infections, and treatment for drug addiction, confidential care for minors is a necessity. Most young people involve their parents in their reproductive health decisions. Sixty-one percent of minors who have abortions inform at least one parent. (Alan Guttmacher Institute, "Teen Sex and Pregnancy," Facts In Brief, 1999.) There are many reasons a young woman cannot or do not tell her parents, for example, presence of alcoholism, emotional or physical abuse, or incest. Involving her parents in an abortion decision may put the young women in more danger.

The argument that medical procedures are safer when parents are involved seems like a good reason for parental involvement laws. However, these laws are pushed not by the medical community or by patient safety advocates, but by anti-choice groups who are opposed to the right of women of any age to choose abortion. Their main goal of these groups is not to protect the health of teens seeking medical procedures – their objective is to make it more difficult for any woman to obtain an abortion. In a C-SPAN press conference in August 2001, Scott Weinberg of the American Life League (an anti-abortion organization) admitted this motivation when he said, "Parental consent laws are intended to keep a younger person from killing an older person's grandchild. That's the impetus behind these regulations."