However, it is extremely difficult to distinguish ongoing trends in abortion rates from the influence of changes in the law that may have occurred 8–10 years earlier. 16 Like Tomal, he found that notification laws were associated with a greater decline in abortions for minors than were parental consent laws. Medoff analyzed minors’ abortion rates-which he defined as abortions per 1,000 pregnancies-from 50 states at three points in time (1982, 19). 15 Moreover, both types of law were associated with the abortion rates and birthrates of adolescents aged 18–19, which calls into question the association with minors’ rates.
6, 15, 16 Tomal analyzed county-level rates of abortions and births among minors and older teenagers in 11 states in 1995, and found that parental notification laws had a stronger negative association with minors’ abortion rate than did parental consent laws. As Texas State Representative Phil King, who sponsored the change in his state, commented, “I think it will do what intended to do by bringing parents into the decision-making process, and when that happens, we’ll see a reduction in abortion and in teenage pregnancy.” 14ĭespite this belief by some politicians, only three studies have analyzed whether laws that require parental consent have a greater impact on the behavior of minors than laws that require parental notification, and they report widely disparate estimates and have major methodological weaknesses.
* 1, 13 Such changes are motivated by a belief that a notice requirement is easier to circumvent than a consent statute, and that a stricter law will lead to fewer abortions. Parental involvement laws regarding minors’ access to abortion in the United States, 2009Īlthough the national map of parental involvement laws is unlikely to change appreciably in the near future, since 2003, four states-Arizona, Arkansas, Texas and Virginia-have converted their parental notification statutes to laws that require parental consent.
#Judicial consent minors series#
7 – 9 In a series of studies, researchers analyzed a parental involvement law under circumstances consistent with the current distribution of laws: Implementation of the Texas parental notification law in 2000 was associated with a decline in abortion rates, a rise in birthrates and an elevated likelihood of minors’ obtaining an abortion after 12 weeks’ gestation. 3 – 6 The few studies that were able to measure abortion by minors’ state of residence generally showed a small, if any, association. 2 Studies that used data on abortion by state of occurrence often found that implementation of parental involvement laws was associated with substantial decreases in teenage abortion rates. Most research on parental involvement laws pertains to an earlier period, when interstate travel by minors to avoid compliance with a law was more common. The implications of this legal environment on the reproductive outcomes of minors are not well understood. 1 In some states-Florida, for example-minors who want to obtain an abortion without parental involvement must travel hundreds of miles to a state that does not have one of these restrictive laws. Almost all states in the middle and southern parts of the United States require that before a physician performs an abortion on a minor, he or she must notify or obtain consent from at least one of the minor’s parents ( Figure 1).