Parental consent not needed for morning after pill at NYC schools

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 by: Craig Stellpflug
Tags: morning after pills, school girls, parental consent

(NaturalNews) The Nanny State does it again... Girls as young as 14 years old can receive pregnancy intervention at 13 New York City high schools - and no parental consent is needed to get pharmaceutical drugs. Plan B morning-after pills and condoms are free for the taking in an unpublicized program that has been ongoing for the past year. This program gives students access to oral contraceptives, birth control injections, condoms and, of course, the morning-after pill, which can prevent an unintended pregnancy up to 72 hours after unprotected sex.

In order to stop their child from receiving the "benefits" of this program, the parents have to find and fill out an opt-out form in order to exclude their child from the freebee program. Unless the parents find and fill out the form, their daughters can get birth control from the school nurse. The pharmaceutical drug prescriptions to both oral and injectable birth control are written by city health department doctors.

The program, called CATCH - Connecting Adolescents To Comprehensive Health - is a citywide attempt to stem the tide of teen pregnancy, which leads to girls - mostly poor - dropping out of school. So far, only about two percent of parents have chosen to opt their kids out of the program.

According to the Associated Press, about 7,000 girls get pregnant by the time they reach the age of 17 and more than half of them choose to get an abortion.

So who has the say in a child's medical care?

The problem of children making their own medical decisions doesn't stop in NYC; as late last year California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB499, which allows children age 12 and up to consent to the triple jab Gardasil from Merck without parental consent. The same children who can't even bring a Pamprin to school for cramps with their parents knowledge, can now agree to medical procedures like vaccination and birth control without their parent's knowledge.

It is obvious that health officials and lawmakers alike are dismissing parental rights and deeming medical care and procedures for children to be the child's area of expertise. And the problem is growing state by state.

The right to informed consent

The legal definition of informed consent is as follows: Informed consent n. agreement to do something or to allow something to happen only after all the relevant facts are known. In contracts, an agreement may be reached only if there has been full disclosure by both parties of everything each party knows which is significant to the agreement. A patient's consent to a medical procedure must be based on his/her having been told all the possible consequences, except in emergency cases when such consent cannot be obtained. A physician or dentist who does not tell all the possible bad news as well as the good, operates at his/her peril of a lawsuit if anything goes wrong. In criminal law, a person accused or even suspected of a crime cannot give up his/her legal rights such as remaining silent or having an attorney, unless he/she has been fully informed of his/her rights.

A child is in absolutely NO legal capacity to make contracts or supply informed consent to medical procedures or pharmaceutical drugs.

All drugs have side-effects

With any and all drugs, there is no such thing as a "side-effect," they are all effects. Some are desirable effects and some are not desirable effects. All drugs come with undesirable effects and the informed consent includes the impetus instilled on the physician to disclose all effects of any drug along with the alternative treatments. Without this information, there was no informed consent.

The right to informed consent confers to the parent/child relationship. Administering medical procedures and drugs to children without the parent's consent is a clear violation of medical and ethical standards.

Sources for this article:

http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=17272
http://abcnews.go.com
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Informed+Consent

About the author:
Craig Stellpflug is a Cancer Nutrition Specialist, Lifestyle Coach and Neuro Development Consultant at Healing Pathways Medical Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ. http://www.healingpathwayscancerclinic.com/ With 17 years of clinical experience working with both brain disorders and cancer, Craig has seen first-hand the devastating effects of vaccines and pharmaceuticals on the human body and has come to the conclusion that a natural lifestyle and natural remedies are the true answers to health and vibrant living. You can find his daily health blog at www.blog.realhealthtalk.com and his articles and radio show archives at www.realhealthtalk.com