Reforming Health Care to Protect Parents' Rights

By Daniel P Moloney, Ph.D.

In pursuing health care reform, federal and state policymakers alike need to respect and protect paren­tal rights and responsibilities. Currently, they are not doing so.

A 14-year-old grade-school girl in Kentucky arrives at the local health clinic seeking birth control. Who should decide whether she receives it? The doctor? The girl? Or her parents? The state legislature says that the girl is not even old enough to consent to sexual activity. Yet public officials, under authorization from Congress, have written rules that allow the girl to enroll in one of a number of federal programs, and this federal law would overrule state law and prohibit the clinic from informing her parents.

A Common Problem

Thousands of similar situations occur each year— not surreptitiously, but legally, under the authority of ... [read more]