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Who Decides? The Abortion Rights of Teens
J. Shoshanna Ehrlich
ISBN: 0-275-98321-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-98321-5
224 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 4/30/2006
List Price: $49.95 (UK Sterling Price: £34.95)
Discount Price: $24.98 Sale Price for U.S. Customers Only. Save 50%. Ends 12/31/2009.
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • Ehrlich explores the social and emotions as well as the legal dimensions of young women who are pregnant but not prepared to bear and raise a child. Her study pivots on the voices of 26 young women from Massachusetts who, under state law, elected to seek court authorization for an abortion rather than obtain consent from a parent. The series will deal with topics about reproduction that are currently contentious in the US, if not anywhere else in the world.
    —Reference & Research Book News     8/1/2006
Description: The question of whether a young woman should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy without her parents' knowledge has been one of the most contentious issues of the post Roe v. Wade era. Parental involvement laws reach to the core of the parent-teen relationship in the highly contested realm of adolescent sexuality. This is the first book to examine in thorough detail the decision-making experiences of teens considering abortion. Shoshanna Ehrlich evaluates the Supreme Court's efforts to reconcile the historically based understanding of teens as dependent persons in need of protection with a more contemporary understanding of them as autonomous individuals with adult-like claims to constitutional recognition.

Arriving at a compromise, the Court has made clear that, like adult women, teens have a protected right of choice, but that states may impose a parental involvement requirement. However, so that parents are not vested with veto power over their daughters' decisions, young women must be allowed to seek a waiver of the requirement. Integrating a wealth of social science literature, including in-depth interviews with 26 young women from Massachusetts who obtained court authorization for an abortion, the book raises important questions about the logic of a legal approach that requires young women to involve adults when they seek to terminate a pregnancy, but that allows them to make a decision to become mothers on their own.
About the Author: J. Shoshanna Ehrlich is Associate Professor on the Legal Education Faculty of the University of Massachusetts-Boston College of Public and Community Service. As Clinical Legal Education Director, she produced a guidebook for young women entitled The Teen Girls' Legal Rights Project (1998).
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