NYT op-ed says parental consent laws are ethical challenge to doctors

An op-ed printed in The New York Times yesterday raised questions about the ethics of requiring doctors to advise minors to inform their parents of their medical care. # Perri Klass, a doctor, wrote that right and wrong is not “clear-cut” when forcing parental involvement in medical cases that involve “sensitive needs as contraception, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and mental health.” # Klass writes about his experience advising a young woman to tell her parents that she had contracted a sexually transmitted infection: ”So against her better judgment, she told her parents her diagnosis. Her father’s reaction was to inform her that once she got out of the hospital, she was no longer welcome to return home.” # He says that “juggling parental concern with an adolescent patient’s legal and ethical right to privacy opens up some tricky questions”: # Clinics for adolescents are keenly conscious that the promise of confidential care is essential to gain and hold their young patients’ trust.