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  • Title: Reproductive health, youth, and the law.
    Author: Paxman JM.
    Journal: WHO Chron; 1984; 38(5):199-207. PubMed ID: 6396955.
    Abstract:
    This article surveys legal and policy approaches to adolescent health care programs and presents data on the availability of sex education programs, contraception, and abortion for adolescents in selected countries in the developed and developing world. The age at which youth are considered legally able reach independent decisions on matters affecting their health varies from country to country, although there is a trend toward setting the "age of majority" at 18 years. There has also been a trend toward viewing laws that require parental consent to health care and treatment as a barrier to health rather than a form of protection. Alternative legal approaches to the dilemma of consent have included lowering the age of majority for purposes of medical treatment, permitting professionals tojude whether an adolescent has sufficient maturity to give consent, and the use of third-party consent (e.g. child advocate). Cultural diversity mitigates against a universal legal approach to reproductive health education. There is wide variation in the policy response to questions such as whether reproductive health education courses should be permitted within the school curriculum, whether they should be obligatory or elective, if there should be separate courses or integration of fertility-related material into existing courses, and whether the sexes should be separated for instruction. There is awareness that formal sex education programs in a school setting cannot reach the large number of adolescents outside the educational system, but laws regarding public dissemination of reproductive health information are often restrictive. Contraceptive-related law and policy affect who has access to contraception and under what conditions. Abortion law takes 2 different forms: those that establish the retionales on which a given pregnancy may be terminated and those that establish the formal procedural requirements that must be met. It is concluded that, overall, law and policy have not kept pace with the health care needs of adolescens. They have in many cases inhibited the provision of health care. The challenge is to get law and policy to address adolescent health care issues in a way that solves problems rather than creates them.
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