Who decides? : the abortion rights of teens

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 surrounding abortion.

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 U.S. 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.

Integrating a wealth of social science literature, including in-depth interviews with 26 young women from Massachusetts who obtained court authorisation 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.