The minor consent law is anti-teen (Minnesota)

The minor consent law, in fact, victimizes the very people it’s supposed to help — teens.

By Tom Prichard


magine your 15-year-old sister is having sex with a 21-year-old man. The young man’s main interest in your sister is sex. She contracts a sexually transmitted infection from him. He pressures her to go to a clinic for birth control pills while at the same time pressuring her for more sex and to keep quiet about their relationship. That is until he decides to dump her.
Or, imagine your 16-year-old brother has a drug problem and doesn’t want your parents to know about it. He receives treatment from a doctor who prescribes a powerful prescription drug to treat the problem. Your parents are not involved in or notified of the treatment. Yet when they get a bill for the treatment and ask what it’s for, the clinic says it can’t disclose that information to them.

In Minnesota, your parents won’t be notified of these situations by the doctor; in fact, parents can’t be notified, unless the minor daughter or son says, “Tell my parents.” Minnesota law, in effect, forbids parents from even being notified when their minor receives treatment for an STI, drug or alcohol problem or a pregnancy — unless the child consents. Parents even are prohibited from accessing their child’s medical records in these areas unless the child consents.

What’s sadly ironic about these situations is that parents can be held criminally liable for neglect or endangerment of their child if they fail to provide necessary health care. Yet in some of the most significant health areas — STIs, drug use and pregnancy treatment — parents are totally cut out of the loop.

Why do we have this law? Because proponents argue teens won’t get treatment if they have to tell their parents. Well, a study on this very point was conducted in Israel and found that in fact kids still got treatment even if they had to involve their parents.

Read the rest of this opinion at:
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/03/31/67826

What do you think??