<p>" continue to shake my head at the repeated claim that the government failing to force a girl to do something her parents want constitutes government’s denial of anyone’s rights. "</p>
<p>I really don’t think minor children should get to pick and choose which rules they follow and which they don’t.</p>
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<p>I agree. But minor children ARE already choosing to pick and choose which rules they follow, and which they don’t. They have sex, regardless of what adults tell them; the stats on teen age pregnancies and teenage abortions are telling;</p>
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<p><a href=“Medical and health information”>Medical and health information;
<p>The question is: what can be done about this?</p>
<p>OK so we enact a law that requires parent notification. Your daughter doesn’t use the service and becomes preggers. Now can you have her tossed in jail because she didn’t use the service so you could be notified?</p>
<p>I really don’t understand the WHY a parents rights are being trampled here. I really don’t. What have you won in your relationship with your daughter by force of a governmental agency supplying you with information? Have you won a closer relationship with your daugther? Is that really how you’d want to hear your child is sexually active, from her school nurse or some clinic? </p>
<p>I would hope my daughter feels she has a strong enough relationship with me to talk to me about something like this. I would not “feel” better hearing it from anyone else but her. If she didn’t feel she could talk to me about something like this, am I the one who let her down?</p>
<p>I support the idea as another option, however I would not create an unuseable service with extra rules and restrictions. Would my feelings be hurt if I weren’t notified… absolutely. But, is this about my feelings? Would we want a service that works or makes us feel good about our parenting?</p>
<p>An underage person cannot do many things legally from entering into a contract to getting a tattoo in many states. I don’t think they can consent to hospital procedures either. Why should this be any different? Some schools will not give out an aspirin without parental authorization.</p>
<p>How about birthcontrol pills, should they be available through the state without parental notification? If you really want to prevent pregnancy, shouldn’t students/minors be able to take the pill with out the hassel of their parents?</p>
<p>Barrons - that’s precisely the point I made a while ago. My high school required parental consent to carry around Advil.</p>
<p>meltingsnow: Good point; maybe the schools could just mix crushed birth control pills in with ice cream and serve ice cream to the girls each day at lunch! I guess that would be a “service that works” 
You wouldn’t have to worry about equitable transportation to birth control clinics that way either! If the one and only goal is preventing pregnancy (which it certainly appears to be), why not? A few pesky parents with their antiquated notions of individual rights vs. the common good? They can go to another school if they don’t like it!</p>
<p>An underage person cannot do many things legally from entering into a contract to getting a tattoo in many states.
Although in Washington they * can* get their body pierced!</p>
<p>“I would hope my daughter feels she has a strong enough relationship with me to talk to me about something like this. I would not “feel” better hearing it from anyone else but her. If she didn’t feel she could talk to me about something like this, am I the one who let her down?”</p>
<p>It doesn’t always have to do with a “strong” relationship. It’s human nature to want to avoid unpleasant circumstances and upset parents are unpleasant, but so what? As I posted previously, wonderful, supportive families can have circumstances under which kids may not want to tell parents but where the parents are in no way abusive. My specific example was one and there are many. Someone could have lost a job, there could be illness or other problems in the home. Plenty of good families have situations where the kids try to sneak something past or where the kids use poor judgment, which is already a pattern since of the pregnancy. There also might be someone else in the picture (like an older boyfriend or his mother) who has an agenda. There are surely circumstances in which a terrible family dynamic is at play, but that is just not always the case and I don’t think you can make that case.</p>
<p>The subject of birth control pills is far back down the path. There are other options, including abstinence. The subject at hand has to do when those other options have either not been chosen or have failed. Prescription of BCP is a red herring and totally irrelevant. So is the posture “children shouldn’t get to pick which rules they follow;” as Marite points out, that wall has already fallen and the question is, “What next?”</p>
<p>Before anyone really pushes a parental notification policy, spend a couple of hours talking to a caseworker for a county or state foster care system. That will give you some small sense of the dynamics of families whose problems have hit the fan to that extent; there is an even larger group of families whose problem set “isn’t quite there yet.” </p>
<p>You can’t pretend that those children, those families, those circumstances don’t exist in non-trivial numbers when formulating a policy.</p>
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<p>HeresHoping, it’s not an assumption: the pregancy numbers, etc., for those locales where schools teach abstinence-based sex education speak for themselves. It says nothing about the at-home sex education for any one student; it says everything about the social dynamic in aggregate.</p>
<p>Imo, parents miss a lot of informal “teachable moments,” from news stories to what happened to a friend of a friend to even episodes of “Sex and the City” or whatever. Suttlety is a lost art.</p>
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<p>I don’t know about New York, but many states have a “mature minor” statute or something similiar that allows minors older than 14-15 to authorize certain medical treatments for themselves, independently. IRC, it specifically applies to STD testing/treatment, birth control, and mental health services. The autonomy is nothing new, at least for older minors and their reproductive rights.</p>
<p>TheDad: Can you provide us with the real, up-to-date numbers?
I am sure it is a VERY complex scenario. I’m not willing to believe your numbers about “locales” that teach abstinence only sex ed and the “social dynamic in aggregate” just because you say so; sorry, nothing personal.</p>
<p>I also personally have no trouble envisioning schools dispensing bc pills and plan B as well as condoms at the health clinics located in high schools in ten or even five years’ time. </p>
<p>A few of us are fighting the good fight, but we’ll be dying off soon. As I said, I think those of you so upset about possible teenage pregnancies can pretty much sit back and relax.</p>
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I didn’t know that California females have a legal right to government-funded contraceptives. When did that happen?</p>
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I’m really out the loop. When did we officially become socialists?</p>
<p>This seems like a useful powerpoint presentation:</p>
<p>Parental Involvement in Minors Abortions</p>
<p>crhrp.ucsf.edu/publications/files/Parental%20Involvement%20in%20Minors%20Abortions_2005Sept13.ppt</p>
<p>zoosermom.</p>
<p>I think your last arguement supported mine? Agreed there aren’t perfect households. My arguement was I hoped my relationship with my D was perfect in all ways, I know it is not. I just wouldn’t want the requirement of parent notification to stand in the way of this type of problem. It’s not a tattoo or peirced ear or R movie. It something much more serious. Would I want to know… sure. Should I have to know…not necessarily if it meant my daughter was too scared to act in a time sensitive situation over fear of my notification. </p>
<p>At the point in time she acts, it’s a miscarriage of sorts, the longer she waits the greater the problem and decision becomes. No one knows for sure 72 after intercourse that their pregnant, it’s a possibility (however small), but the longer she waits the ability to handle it simply deminishes IF it is a pregnancy. </p>
<p>I agree kids worry about upseting their parents, they worry about everything else in the family. Would knowing that if they went to the nurse or any organization that that entity or person would contact their parents…encourage them to go in any of those situations? I don’t think so. So they’d put it off and then if they are pregnant, a new bigger problem happens. harder decisions result.</p>
<p>Secrets like that always come out sooner or later. Why not just make it sooner and not have a festering big secret?</p>
<p>Barrons:</p>
<p>Agree, The question is how to convince teens in a timely manner.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story-php?storyID=4569392[/url]”>http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story-php?storyID=4569392</a></p>
<p>No mention of reproductive services, but in Oakland I think that’s a given. They do mention “a heavy emphasis on mental health.” Hillary’s national health care bombed? Let’s sneak it in the back door.</p>
<p>I strongly prefer for schools to stick to eduactional programs and leave healthcare out of it. They have PLENTY of areas to improve upon already.</p>
<p>* strongly prefer for schools to stick to eduactional programs and leave healthcare out of it. They have PLENTY of areas to improve upon already.*</p>
<p>Health is already a state requirement for graduation in washington and I assume in other states- that is why th ebig hoohah about if textbooks mention condoms as birth control or just as disease preventative.
Our clinic in our school is run by a local hospital- and staff is available to not only dispense medication, but give physicals, provide mental health care and referrals to other community services.</p>