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Flawed Laws, Better Ethics: Not All Teenagers Are Alike

Said a 16-year-old to her 14-year-old brother who had been verbally humiliated by several of his new classmates: "Mike, it's bound to get better. Think how I was two years ago; aren't I better now? .... As one who had observed that 16-year-old through all of her young life, I totally agreed with her self-assessment. Two years later, her insight about Mike and his classmates proved hue as well. This anecdote captures both a strength and a weakness in Lainie Friedman Ross's "liberal" critique of specialized consent statutes (SCS) for adolescents (1996). The strength is that it builds on the correct observation that many adolescents who have the legal right to ohtain contraceptives, ahortions, and drug treatment without parental consent are not mature enough to make such decisions in their own interests. The weakness is its virtual neglect of the rights of adolescents who are mature enough to do so. Ross's argument is most compelling when the adolescent about whom she writes is as young as Mike, as was Jane in her illustrative Case. Had Jane been 17 instead of ]4, her argument would have been less persuasive. Although Ross defines "minors.... as "all individuals under the age of 18, which is the current legal age of emancipation," she does not argue for any particular age, believing that "the age should be chosen by social consensus." But suppose social consensus determined a much younger age than 18 as the onset of "emancipation." Suppose, for example, that Jane lived in a community in which one's 14th birthday was regarded as marking the transition to adulthood. Or suppose the age were even younger (e.g., 12 years) than that which is the threshold status between 14 and 18 at which emancipated minor status and the mature