Toward a Thomistic perspective on abortion and the law in contemporary America.
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CONTEXT: Recent legislative efforts to implement mandated parental involvement for minor adolescents seeking family planning services threaten the rights of adolescents younger than 18 to access reproductive health care. METHODS: State and federal laws and policies pertaining to minor adolescents' rights to access services for contraception and sexually transmitted diseases are reviewed, and research examining issues of parental involvement among adolescents using clinic-based reproductive health services is synthesized. RESULTS: Attempts to mandate parental involvement for reproductive health care often focus on contraceptive services and are typically linked to federal or state funding. Studies of teenagers using clinic-based family planning services suggest that slightly more than one-half would obtain contraceptives at family planning clinics even if parental notification were required. Mandated parental involvement for contraception would discourage few teenagers from having sex, but would likely result in more teenagers' using the least effective methods, such as withdrawal, or no method at all. Family planning clinics encourage teenagers to voluntarily talk to their parents, but relatively little information is available about the extent to which activities to promote parent-child communication have been adopted. CONCLUSIONS: Mandated parental involvement for teenagers seeking contraceptive care would likely contribute to increases in rates of teenage pregnancy. Research that will help clinics implement and improve efforts to encourage voluntary parental involvement is urgently needed.
This study examined the Case Summary Questionnaires completed by attorneys representing minors at judicial consent for abortion hearings in Massachusetts and filed with the Women's Bar Association. The 477 Case Summaries filed between December 1981 and June 1985 were analyzed to provide a more systematic account of how the judicial consent statute is applied in the courtroom. After hearings which typically lasted 12 minutes, only nine minors were judged immature. No evidence for a discernible pattern justifying these rulings emerged from an examination of petitioner and court characteristics such as age, length of hearing, number of weeks pregnant, or presiding judge. Further, 11 lawyers privately reported they found their clients immature. In only one instance, however, did the lawyer and judge identify the same adolescent. The findings add to a growing body or research that calls into question the ability of the consent statute to protect the best interest of the minors involved.
In Canada, the history of state regulation of abortion is underexamined, leaving the general impression that the state played a secondary role to that of the medical profession in attempting to enforce the federal anti-abortion law. Studies have focused on "regular" physicians as a regulator of abortion to such an extent that the state's involvement in this process has been largely neglected or obscured. In contrast, this study highlights the actions taken by lower-level state agencies, namely, the Coroner's Inquisition and municipal and provincial police, to enforce the federal abortion law in British Columbia. The study examines the records of the inquests held into the deaths of 34 women from illegal abortion and offers three main observations. First, state agencies consistently sought information about abortionists and the circumstances surrounding the abortions from the women in hospital, their families, lovers, and doctors. Especially important is how authorities routinely attempted to extract dying declarations from the ill women. Second, while it is clear doctors participated in the investigative process, the records suggest they were often ambivalent or reluctant to do so. Finally, this study concludes that many of the actors involved in these events resisted the authorities' attempts to enforce the law, some successfully, thereby effectively undermining state regulatory practices as a result.
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OBJECTIVE: To ascertain pharmacists' views, assess willingness for involvement and delineate individual perceived competence in the supply of deregulated hormonal emergency contraception (HEC). DESIGN: Cross-sectional postal questionnaire utilising closed, open and Likert-scale questions. SUBJECTS: Three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine registered pharmacists abstracted from the mailing list of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. RESULTS: In total 1543 (38.6%) questionnaires were returned and analysed. Overall 1165 (75.5%) of pharmacists stated their willingness to be involved in the deregulated supply of HEC. However, pharmacists identified the need for specific training before effective deregulation should take place. Overall, 616 (39.9%) of respondents felt individually competent to supply deregulated HEC with a positive association between perceived competence and willingness to supply deregulated HEC (p < 0.05). Pharmacists perceive the major benefits of deregulation to be a reduced unwanted pregnancy rate and a subsequent reduced abortion rate. They perceive that deregulation would allow quicker and less restricted access to HEC by clients, facilitating an increased overall supply of HEC. Pharmacists express a number of concerns, tempering their collective desire to see HEC deregulation. The majority of these concerns related to safeguarding clients and the possible adverse public health effects associated with the possible reduced use of barrier methods of contraception. CONCLUSIONS: Most pharmacists would be willing to supply HEC if it were deregulated to 'pharmacy only' from 'prescription only' medicine status. Although concerns were raised, these were mainly related to safety issues, with few pharmacists identifying moral and ethical barriers to deregulation. For effective deregulation to occur issues of professional competence need to be addressed.
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