Minors and abortion

Abortion law
Part of the abortion series
History & overview
Case law
History of abortion law
Laws by country
Types of regulation
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Conscience clauses
Informed consent
Fetal protection
Parental involvement
Spousal consent

Many jurisdictions have laws applying to minors and abortion. These parental involvement laws require that one or more parents consent to or be informed before their minor daughter may legally have an abortion.

Laws in the United States

In the United States, most states typically require one of two types of parental involvement – consent and/or notification. As of November 2006, 34 states required minor some type of parental involvement in a minor's decision to have an abortion--21 states require one or both parents to consent to the procedure, 11 require one or both parents be notified and 2 require both consent and notification before an elective abortion can occur. [1]

Parental involvement laws played a key role in forcing the Court to clarify its position on abortion regulation. The Court ruled, in essence, that parental involvement laws (and all other abortion regulation) can legally make it more difficult for a female to acquire an abortion. But there is a threshold beyond which the increased difficulties become unconstitutional. Requiring spousal consent before a woman can acquire an abortion has been interpreted as falling on the unconstitutional side of that threshold, while parental involvement has been interpreted as falling on the constitutional side. Or, to use the language of Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), spousal consent laws place an "undue burden" on a woman's ability to get an abortion, whereas parental involvement laws do not.

Parental involvement laws have three basic features. First, they are binding on minors, not adults. Second, they require, at minimum, that minors notify their parents before an abortion is performed, and in some cases consent from the parents. And third, they allow minors to acquire a judicial bypass if consent cannot be acquired. These regulations are but one example of the detailed fabric of abortion legislation and regulation that has evolved since the Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion in its 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

The first major case involving parental involvement legislation was decided in 1976 in Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth. This case involved a Missouri law that required consent from various parties before an abortion could be performed - written consent by the patient, spousal consent for married individuals, and parental consent for minors, specifically. The court ruled that the parental consent provision was unconstitutional due to its universal enforcement.

The ability of a minor to acquire an abortion against her parent's wishes became a recurring theme in several more cases following Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth. Belloti v. Baird (1979) addressed a Massachusetts law that required a minor to acquire parental consent before an abortion was performed. But, unlike the Danforth case, this law allowed for judicial bypass if consent could not be acquired. Similar reasoning can be found in H.L. v. Matheson (1981). This case ruled on the relatively milder regulation of parental notification as opposed to parental consent. In this case, the Court ruled that parental notification is constitutional since the parent could not veto the adolescent's final decision to acquire an abortion. In Planned Parenthood of Kansas City v. Ashcroft (1983), the Supreme Court ruled conclusively on the constitutionality of parental consent laws – parental consent was found to be constitutional so long as it also allowed a judicial bypass if such consent could not be acquired. In Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), the Court placed parental involvement firmly within a broader set of legal principles governing a woman's constitutional right to an abortion. Parental involvement, and other regulations, were constitutional so long that they did not place an "undue burden" on a woman's ability to acquire an abortion.

Arguments in support of parental notification

Advocacy groups have made a number of arguments in favor of parental notification. [2]

• Minors must have parental approval for most types of medical procedures.
• The pregnant minor might be pressured into having an abortion by an older boyfriend, so as to conceal the fact that he is guilty of statutory rape.
• Currently, the parents of the minor are financially responsible for any complications resulting from the abortion.
• Notification and consent laws give parents a chance to counsel their teenage daughters about the possible consequences of abortion. [3]

Arguments against parental notification

Advocacy groups on the other side have also made a number of arguments against parental notification:

• Abortion restrictions are dangerous to young women's health, as young women who feel they cannot talk to their parents about their sex lives or about rape or incest that they may have suffered may seek illegal abortions as a result. [4]
• Total abortion rates among teenagers are not affected by parental notification laws, as teenagers will often travel to a nearby state to have an abortion. [5]
• Most professional medical societies oppose parental notification laws. [6]
• In general, the only situation where a minor would not consult her parents about an abortion is in a dysfunctional family situation, where the minor's parents lack the basic competence to be entrusted with the decision about the minor's pregnancy. [7]
• Delaying an abortion even if only by a couple of days, increases the likelihood of complications arising from abortion procedures. In fact, legal and safe abortions before the third trimester are less dangerous than childbirth for teens as they are 24 times more likely to die from childbirth complications than from a legal abortion performed in the first trimester. However, the risk of death or major complications significantly increases for each week into pregnancy, particularly if the abortion is delayed until the third trimester. [8]
• Studies have found that mandatory parental notification for contraceptives would drastically decrease a teens use of sexual health care services, potentially increasing pregnancies and the spread of STDs. [9]
• A belief that most minors of childbearing age are sufficiently mature to make abortion decisions by themselves.^{[citation needed]}

Parental Notification and Sexual Behavior

Separate from parental notification laws' effect on abortion demand is the effect it has on adolesecent sexual choice. Because parental Involvement laws marginally raise the cost of abortion, they may cause females to reduce the probability of pregnancy all things considered. This theory of abortion restriction implicitly assumes that individuals are rational and forward-thinking. That abortion laws affect a priori sexual decision is another way of saying that abortion has a moral hazard component.

• Economists Philip Levine and Douglas Staiger model abortion availability as a kind of pregnancy insurance. [10] Mandatory delay, parental involvement, medicaid funding of abortions, and abortion legalization in general all change one or both sides of the cost/benefit ledger. As abortions become ``cheaper,`` the cost of becoming pregnant falls as well, thus weakening the incentives to avoid pregnancy in the first place. This theory of rational abortion selection states that changes in the cost of abortions will cause women to choose differing levels of pregnancy risk. Hence, making abortions more difficult may induce some women to avoid pregnancy in the first place.
• Evidence for this is mixed. Levine finds evidence for this in one paper using data from the CDC's National Survey of Family and Growth, but not from other data sources, suggesting that the effect - if it exists at all - is not very strong. See Levine's book SEX AND CONSEQUENCES: ABORTION, PUBLIC POLICY, AND THE ECONOMICS OF FERTILITY for descriptions of these and other studies testing the hypothesis.
• Economists Jonathan Klick and Thomas Stratmann publish evidence for this hypothesis in the 2008 Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, volume 24. The article is entitled ``Abortion Access and Risky Sex Among Teens: Parental Involvement Laws and Sexually Transmitted Diseases.`` Klick and Stratmann test Levine's hypothesis using state-level data on gonnorhea (broken down by race, age, gender and year), and find that the adoption of parental involvement laws is associated with a decrease in gonorrhea rates for White female adolescents. The effect is statistically significant and meaningful in size. No discernible effect is found on older age cohorts, giving some support that the law, and not general state-specific abortion sentiment, is deterring adolescent risky sexual behavior.

See also

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