#INSTANCES FOR JUDICIAL CONSENT SERIES#

10вЂ“12ДЄlthough 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.

7вЂ“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 minorsвЂ™ obtaining an abortion after 12 weeksвЂ™ gestation. 3вЂ“6 The few studies that were able to measure abortion by minorsвЂ™ 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. States that convert a parental notification statute to a parental consent statute are unlikely to experience a decrease in abortions among minors.ДЄlmost 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 minorвЂ™s parents ( Figure 1). Minors who used the bypass option were less likely than those who obtained parental consent to have a second-trimester abortion (0.5), and they terminated the pregnancy 1.1 weeks earlier, on average, than did minors who had gotten such consent. Ten percent of all abortions among minors were obtained through the judicial bypass procedure, and minors aged 15 or younger who had an abortion were less likely than those aged 17 to get a waiver (odds ratio, 0.2). No association was found between the change in the law and either the abortion rate or the second-trimester abortion rate among minors in the state. Linear and logistic regression analyses estimated the changes in rates among different age-groups, and assessed the likelihood of minors' using the bypass procedure or having a second-trimester abortion. Using state health department data on 7,463 abortions among 15вЂ“19-year-olds over the period 2001вЂ“2007, an analysis of abortion and second-trimester abortion rates among Arkansas minors relative to rates among older teenagers evaluated the influence of the 2005 change in the law. In 2005, Arkansas changed its parental notification requirement for minors seeking an abortion to a parental consent law, under which a minor can obtain an abortion without consent after obtaining a judicial waiver. First published online: SeptemDOI: CONTEXT

#INSTANCES FOR JUDICIAL CONSENT SERIES#

Instances for judicial consent