Abstract
We would like to correct misinterpretations in the article “Fertility and Parental Consent for Minors to Receive Contraceptives,” which appeared in the August 2004 edition of the Journal. This article examines the effect of requiring parental consent for minors to receive medical contraceptives from the McHenry County Department of Health in Illinois. Zavodny concludes that the parental consent requirement has significantly raised the number of teenage pregnancies in the county. To reach this conclusion, the author used birth rates for women aged 18 years and younger. This is a serious error in the study population. The McHenry County Board of Health’s 1998 decision allowed medical contraceptives to be provided to teenagers aged 17 years and younger only with parental consent; for women aged 18 years and older, parental consent is not required. During the “before” period (1997–1998), 67% of all births to teenagers in McHenry County were to women aged 18 and 19 years. During the “after” period (1999–2000), this percentage increased to 72.1%. However, the percentage of births to teenagers aged 17 years and younger actually decreased, from 33% before imposition of the parental consent requirement to 28% afterward. The increase in overall teenage birth rate suggested by the author is likely to be due to the increase in the number of births to 18- and 19-year-olds, not to termination of the Title X program in McHenry County. The removal of this age group removes a large portion of the study population, decreases the sample size, and thus greatly affects the conclusions that can be drawn from this study. Additionally, the author failed to offer an explanation for why teenage birth rates increased from 1997 to 1998 even though Title X was available for all counties in the area. Finally, we feel that the time interval under study was far too short to see any valid increase or decrease in teenage birth rates. Intervals of 5 to 10 years before and after the county’s termination of the Title X program would have been far more appropriate to assess an actual trend in birth rates rather than a possibly random fluctuation. McHenry County has exhibited some of the lowest teenage birth and infant mortality rates in the state of Illinois,2 both before and after the Board of Health’s decision regarding Title X. The board maintains a high interest in this subject and continues to monitor this situation closely.
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