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Adolescent Sexuality and Public Policy: A Liberal Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Lainie Friedman Ross
Lainie Friedman Ross*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, USA
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Abstract

Conflicting U.S. statutes exist governing adolescent sexuality. While parents are allowed to remove their children from sex education, they cannot prevent their children from procuring medical care and contraception without parental awareness or consent. I argue that specialized consent statutes—statutes which empower adolescents to seek confidential reproductive and sexual health care—are an inappropriate solution to adolescent sexuality because (1) they empower individuals whom we otherwise believe are not ready for autonomous decision-making; (2) they endorse deception, which is the wrong message to be sending to our children; and (3) they are illiberal in that they circumvent parental decision-making authority to promote a particular conception of the good life. I argue that we should rescind these statutes and return these decisions to the family.

Type
Adolescent Contraception
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 13 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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