So a sixteen year old girl goes into a clinic and asks for a prescription for the contraceptive pill. Should the doctor be obliged to notify her parents?

It seems that 55% of American parents think "yes".

Regardless of whether they think that parental notification laws should be in place, almost all recognise that these laws will have negative consequences, such as more girls indulging in unprotected sex.

Dr Marla Eisenberg of the University of Minnesota says

Although parents may intellectually recognize the need for adolescents to have access to confidential care, support for parental notification laws may arise from other factors such as fear of unknown others making decisions about their children's health, the desire to monitor their children's activities, and global beliefs about the appropriate role or parents.

The fact that most parents who support PNLs recognise that their daughter may participate in dangerous sexual excounters as a result of these laws and yet still support them points to a complex set of beliefs relating to their role in protecting and nuturing their daughter. It seems obvious that they are not of the opinion that their daughter would abstain from sex. If this was the case they would not be supporting PNLs, since their would be no need for them.

It seems likely that punishment plays a role, ie if she is denied access to contraceptives and information about sex and STDs and she participates anyway then any negative outcomes are her punishment. This is a nice simplistic approach however it is important to get things in perspective. A girl dying of AIDS is a punishment on both the girl and her parents that does not seem to fit the crime of doing what your body was built to do.

Read more here.