Minors as Medical Decision Makers: The Pretextual Reasoning of the Court in the Abortion Cases

By examining the Court's failure to consider the allocation of authority between parents and children in the critical realm of medical decision making, this article exposes the irrationality of the Court's acceptance of limitations on the abortion rights of minors and reveals the pronatalist thrust of the parental involvement decisions. The article begins by looking at how the Roe Court characterized abortion as a medical decision, followed by a discussion about the medical decision-making rights of minors. Rooted in this medical paradigm, the article then turns to the parental involvement cases to examine the Court's failure to consider the medical decision-making of minors when evaluating the constitutionality of parental involvement laws as well as its emerging concern for the rights of the unborn.