Juvenile Law Commons^™

As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction.  States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion.  This Article argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision-making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears.  A closer look at the law’s apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars …