However–I’m by no means a legal buff, but I wonder if children under a certain age count as full “persons” under the law?

Thats quite a dangerous path to go down. Once you’ve created an exception as to who counts as a full “person” and who does not you open the door to a variety of unpleasant possibilities. The current state of the law is that, while parents do not own their children, they are responsible for their care and supervision in a variety of contexts. The extent of their authority differs depending on the age of the child and the situation in question, but parents are legally guardians rather than masters.

The distinction between guardian and authority is an important one. The privileges wielded by legal guardians exist, in theory, to protect the child. A single dose of EC is unlikely to be dangerous, so I don’t really see much in the way of protection to be gained from reducing the access of all individuals under a certain arbitrary age. The only reason to do that is to increase the power and authority of the parent for the sake of that parent’s own comfort. At best it is a guarantee of constant surveillance, at worst it puts quite a few children in active danger. The realistic outcome is going to be that children who want EC will still try to obtain it but they will not talk to a pharmacist directly, will be fall prey to the demands of those who will obtain it for them, will likely pay more under a black/grey market situation (thus increasing the already significant issue of class privilege), and will risk consuming impure, dangerous, or inert drugs. All so a mother like Pauline can imagine (an important distinction, as any restriction will likely be symbolic so long as the drug is available to some class over the counter) that she can be as involved as she would like.

Single-dose oral levonorgestrel has virtually no clinically relevant harmful drug interactions. Theoretically, some anticonvulsants and some more obscure drugs _might_ reduce its contraceptive efficacy, but that’s about it. And, as you identify, it’s the pharmacist’s job to screen for any interactions.

It has basically no contraindications except existing pregnancy of greater than eight weeks’ gestation (again, part of pre-dose screening), or known true allergy (very rare).

There is no practical way to overdose on it.

It is far, far safer than most of the stuff a much younger kid can grab from a supermarket.

This all rests on my wishful assumption that we would one day have good enough sex ed that an 11 or 12 year old would know why and how to get EC in the first place if they *were* being abused by a parent.

William: I think Pauline might benefit from the whole non-enumerated rights concept.

However–I’m by no means a legal buff, but I wonder if children under a certain age count as full “persons” under the law?

No sorry it is. As long as I can be held legally liable for the actions of an underage minor it sure as hell is.

Is, or should be? See, theres the rub. You have an opinion, I have an opinion. The only real difference is that mine is law and yours used to be.

I like to read it literally, as it was written. I actually don’t see the problem between those two parts that you apparently do. Try reading it literally once (or twice)

The problem with literal readings is that they’re artificial. You can’t divorce a document from it’s context, historical perspective, or underlying theory. A literal reading of the constitution is even more foolish than most context-blind readings because the constitution was specifically designed to be an evolving document. The idea is that it exists to define the roles of government and protect the rights of the people. Those rights come from theory. That theory comes primarily from Locke and Paine with Mill being a heavy influence in it’s later development.

No I love that one! Which is why I continue to object to the arbitrary erosion of my parental rights!

Thats a poor reading. See, in order for your “parental rights” to exist they need to be enforced by the government against individuals. One of the most important things to notice is that the constitution’s conception of liberty is fundamentally negative. The entire bill of rights sets out things that the government cannot do. For your “parental rights” to be protected the government would have to actively do something, in this case engage in oversight.

But thats not really the end of your problem. The 14th amendment guarantees that

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Now I know, you’re going to argue that that passage protects your parental rights (although thats not quite the literal reading you seemed to argue for before), but you have the problem that your children are also covered by the 14th. Nothing in the constitution gives you special authority over them. That means that the state cannot pass laws to protect a special authority you claim because that would create an unequal protection and would, essentially, mean the state denying your children liberty that is theirs in your name.

What we have then is a situation of competing rights; there is a competition between the rights claimed by you as a parent and the rights claimed by your child as a person. Your child’s rights are enumerated, confirmed by the Supreme Court, and enshrined in the law. Your parental rights are traditions with a history of abuse.

Ah, well you should tell that to those parents who get cited for not having the right car seat, or whose kid misses 30 days of school, or damages property, or gets caught disturbing the peace. I’m sure the judges in all those cases will find your argument persuasive (not).

Your examples don’t work as well as you would like. The car seat example goes right out the window because the protections required for a 5 year old and the protections required for a 16 year old are radically different. The example of missing school also falls somewhat flat because, at 16, your child could legally drop out of school in most (all?) jurisdictions without your permission. Finally, the example of property damage is a poor analogy because a child, of any age, getting EC isn’t going to harm anyone other than potentially themselves. There is no aggrieved party, no one who has a legal claim on the child’s body. You seem to be confusing rights with responsibilities, which is troubling. As a parent, you have certain responsibilities that you must fulfill or else. A right is something that protects and individual from someone doing something to them. Those are very different concepts. To tie them together transforms rights into mere privileges.

I would object to those privations just as much as I would object to a law limiting access to EC. Still, even if I didn’t, you would still have a problem. Reproductive freedom occupies a fairly unique place in American law. We can argue over whether that is right, but we cannot argue over whether that is so. The current state of the law is that your kid can get EC without you. The onus is on you to prove why that is wrong within the bounds of precedent. Thats the nice thing about having essentially won the pro-choice argument in the courts. I don’t have to prove shit, my position is assumed to be correct in the law. You can whinge and whine all you’d like, you can draw all the poor parallels you can imagine, but those don’t count as truth. Before your position can even be argued you have to disprove the status quo.

Not my double standard. I just want to live by what’s actually in the document. You’re the one that seems to want to put other stuff into the “spirit” of the “living” document and make other people live by it too.

I don’t want to make you do anything, I want to restrain the government from doing certain things. In the absence of regulation, peoples lives will play out according to their desires. Laws are required to reduce the realization of certain desires and remove from society those individuals who would infringe upon the rights of others for their own gain. I don’t see a materially harmed party when a 16 year old buys EC, therefore I don’t see the government as having a legitimate interest in involving itself in that transaction. One of the few things the founders agreed upon was that the purpose of government was to maximize liberty (even at the potential expense of other utilities). Thats not the spirit of the document, thats the system of government explicitly laid out. There is no special privilege for parents anywhere in there, nor even a mention of parents or children.

And I don’t see many people arguing that children shouldn’t have a right to vote because a parent gets any and all say over what they do. I see the argument that they’re not mature enough to make such a decision about the direction of the country. Which is a 100% wholly different argument. If Pauline was primarily arguing “teenagers are old enough and mature enough to make the decision to not get pregnant,” I’d find that a radically dumb argument as well. But while she has said that in passing, she is primarily screaming “parental rights!” Which in this context doesn’t mean they can’t handle such a decision, it means that such a decision is not theirs to begin with.

And yes, I want 11 and 12 year olds to have access to EC. It’s a horrible thought, as those kids are almost certainly being raped. But watching them get pregnant isn’t going to help matters much. And making them get parental permission sure as hell isn’t going to help, seeing as how it’s likely that a parent is the one raping them, and that if they were comfortable going to their parents about the fact that they were being raped by someone else, they likely would have already.

No, sorry, it isn’t.

No sorry it is. As long as I can be held legally liable for the actions of an underage minor it sure as hell is.

” I just got done studying the constitution with my 10th grader. None of that crap is in there and I’ve even heard pro-choice legal experts call R v. W bad law.”

Well, I suppose that depends mostly on how you choose to read the constitution.

I like to read it literally, as it was written. I actually don’t see the problem between those two parts that you apparently do. Try reading it literally once (or twice)

“The real problem you face, though, is that messy 9th amendment. You know the one I’m talking about, the one that says that just because something isn’t written in the bill of rights doesn’t mean it isn’t a right.”

No I love that one! Which is why I continue to object to the arbitrary erosion of my parental rights!

“So if you want to beat me over the head for objecting to the government chipping away at my parental rights”

You don’t have parental rights because you cannot own another human being.”

Ah, well you should tell that to those parents who get cited for not having the right car seat, or whose kid misses 30 days of school, or damages property, or gets caught disturbing the peace. I’m sure the judges in all those cases will find your argument persuasive (not).

again, you’ll have to use something other than the constitution to do so.

“Nice double standard there. ”

Not my double standard. I just want to live by what’s actually in the document. You’re the one that seems to want to put other stuff into the “spirit” of the “living” document and make other people live by it too.

Back attcha (although i see you’re out of trump!) Because until you’ve had a child, cared for a child, sacrificed for a child, planned, worried, fought for, laughed with, cried with, enjoyed and loved a child you are solely responsible for, you don’t have a clue.

My mother tried to “parent” me my giving me books by Jerry Falwell, telling me abortion was wrong, shaming me for having sex and kicking me out of the house. Guess who didn’t know when her daughter had an abortion at 17? Guess whose daughter was clueless about birth control?

Oh, and you can buy most toenail treatments easily over the counter. And some hormones (everything from vitamin D, yes, a hormone, and transdermal progesterone are available over the counter).

By the way, my older son just turned 10 yesterday. I wholeheartedly support making EC (which is not abortion, by the way) available without parental permission. I think setting up any obstacles in the way of reproductive rights is a recipe for increased abortion, increased teen pregnancy, and increased poor maternal and infant and child health outcomes. It is not the childfree vs. the parents, here. We are making the government LESS paternalistic by this change in policy.

Now, back to the OP. I think even making EC have an age limit is trouble, since vulnerable women who look young will be forced to show identification with their name and address to obtain it. (if it’s anything like cigarettes, we are talking anyone who looks under 30. I still get carded for alcohol occasionally at 36.) There is a reason why state law in my state and many others guarantees privacy to treat STDs in minors.

If pregnancy allows most teens to become emancipated, why can’t the decision to prevent it also be given to them like an adult?

With respect to my own kids? Like hell it is.

No, sorry, it isn’t. Perhaps there is some grey area between childhood and adolescence in which your opinion matters, but beyond that point the best you can hope for is to be an adviser to a young person who is likely to make bad decisions. Realistically, you can’t do a damned thing about it. You fucked up when you were a kid, I fucked up when I was a kid, aside from locking your offspring in a closet your only real choice is to send them out into the world, hope for the best, and be there if it all goes bad. Maybe that isn’t the reality you like, but its there and the law doesn’t exist to help you maintain some comfortable little narcissistic illusion through petty harassment.

I just got done studying the constitution with my 10th grader. None of that crap is in there and I’ve even heard pro-choice legal experts call R v. W bad law.

Well, I suppose that depends mostly on how you choose to read the constitution. You’ve got that whole “liberty” part of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You’ve got the fourth amendment which restricts intrusion. Both of those would seem to knock your argument off it’s perch.

The real problem you face, though, is that messy 9th amendment. You know the one I’m talking about, the one that says that just because something isn’t written in the bill of rights doesn’t mean it isn’t a right. If you went just a little further than 10th grade civics you’d find out that that amendment is there as a catch all, as a means of reserving a potentially infinite number of rights to the people. A little bit of hermeneutics is important here. The Bill of Rights was written during a certain time period, and the founders decided to enumerate those rights most salient to that time period. Abortion wasn’t a big public issue in the late 18th century, so it wasn’t covered. Quartering of soldiers was, so it got covered quite early. Things change, thats why the 9th is there.

The fundamental principles behind the rights enumerated, however, do point to absolute bodily sovereignty. Locke argued that pretty much the only limitation was suicide and the draft, Mill argued an even more extreme variation, part of the core of Paine’s argument had to do with the individual owning themselves. The idea of individual sovereignty was important because, prior to the rise of democracy in the west, people were pretty much owned by whoever owned the land they farmed. So no, abortion isn’t mentioned in the constitution, but not seeing the connection between the principles outlined and abortion demands either ignorance or willful blindness.

So if you want to beat me over the head for objecting to the government chipping away at my parental rights

You don’t have parental rights because you cannot own another human being.Depending one where you live, your daughter could become an emancipated minor as early as 14. At any age your very ability to see your child could be terminated if you were found to be unfit. At the most liberal interpretation you lose the ability to claim any “parent rights” the day your child becomes eligible to emancipate. From that point forward, legally, you’re a guide who gets to foot the bill.

And it isn’t the government “chipping away at your parental rights.” The government isn’t ordering anyone to take the morning after pill. Its your kid you’re opposing. All the government is doing is saying that if you and your child disagree in this situation you can go fuck yourself.

again, you’ll have to use something other than the constitution to do so.

Nice double standard there. Show me where in the constitution you have any enumerated or implied rights as a parent. I don’t see anything about an age of consent being tied to having rights, nor do I see anything about the definition of “we the people” being restricted to those over a given age. Hell, I don’t see a single reference to parent or child in either the constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration even goes so far as to identify rights as “inalienable,” claimed by “all men,” and “endowed.” That seems to argue that they come as a birth right, not with some arbitrary rite of passage.

It doesn’t matter if girls have abusive parents, because they are their parents’ property and obviously all parents are as good and kind and wonderful and understanding as Pauline herself is, because duh, giving birth to children magically gave them enlightened attitudes about their teens’ sexuality, donchaknow? And even if there are parents who didn’t get this installed, due to some mixup at the Making People Good Parents factory or something, the child is still their property and they can do what they want with it, even making the girl give birth to a kid she doesn’t want and isn’t prepared to take care of, because after all, it’s her property. Like a hammer. Your hammer doesn’t get a choice whether to pound in a nail, why should your daughter get a choice in whether to have a baby?

A similar application of this principle is shown in how we don’t have social services or foster care.