The Undue Burden: Parental Notification Requirements for Publicly Funded Contraception

Abstract

This article analyzes the legal impact of legislative proposals in 1998 and 1999 to require parental notification for minors seeking publicly funded contraception. Part I explores the history of Title X and some of its amendments, the HHS interpretive “squeal rule,” and the federal courts' rejection of the HHS rule based on the congressional intent behind Title X. Part II focuses on the Parental Notification Act of 1998 and its likelihood for success against a constitutional challenge, based on an analysis of precedent on parental consent requirements for contraception and abortion. Part III discusses the change in the legislative and judicial vision of adolescent privacy rights over time, from a more expansive notion of adolescents as individuals with rights to a more restrictive notion of adolescents as children subject to their parents' rights. The article concludes by touching upon some other legal trends that reveal this narrowing view of minors' privacy rights, including an increase in statutory rape prosecution during the last decade.