Letters to the Editor
This letter is associated with the following article:
-
a child no longer
If the teenager gives birth, she becomes a parent for her child, with all the rights and obligations. Her parents have no obligation to help her with her child and no right to interfere with how the teenager brings up the child. (This simply isn't the case with other medical procedures a child may have- a parent can be held liable for criminally neglecting a medical problem or can sue a provider for bad care.) For issues involving that baby, the teenager is the adult. It seems to me that "issues involving that baby" includes the decision whether to have that child at all. So, teenagers should be presumed to be adults when making the decision to have an abortion, just like they would be if they were to have the child.