Article: Parental consent requirement for birth control may up U.S. teen pregnancy rates.

2004 SEP 20 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Requiring minors to obtain parental consent to gain access to contraceptives appears to have raised the number of teen pregnancies in a study of such a program in Illinois.

Madeline Zavodny, PhD, compared teenage pregnancies, births, and abortions in McHenry County, Illinois, where the only public health clinic instituted a parental consent requirement in 1998, to pregnancies, births, and abortions in three nearby counties.

In the 2 years after the parental consent requirement went into effect, the percentage of births and abortions to women and girls under age 20 rose by 0.76 percentage points relative to the ...

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