States such as Ohio are making it impossible for teen moms to get pain relief during childbirth due to consent laws.
An epidural is a common type of anesthesia used during childbirth to help ease the pain of labor, but under law it is considered an ‘elective procedure’.
In Ohio, it is illegal for someone under the age of 18 to provide consent to receive prenatal ‘elective procedures’, such as an epidural and cesarean section, if a guardian isn’t present.
Critics are calling for a change in the consent laws because they are preventing teens from getting the necessary health care coverage for themselves and their babies.
State laws differ what minors under the age of 18 are allowed to consent to in terms of their own health care. Lawmakers in Ohio are pushing a new bill through the house to allow minors to provide their own consent through the delivery of the fetus
State laws differ across the United States about what people under 18 are allowed to consent for in terms of their health care.
There are 28 states including the District of Columbia that allow all minors the ability to provide consent for prenatal care.
Within this prenatal care includes the choice to have a cesarean section and epidural if needed.
These 28 states allow people under the age of 18 to make decisions about prenatal care without a legal guardian present.
In states such as Ohio, though, there is no law allowing for minors to give consent for health procedures.
It is one of 13 other states in the United States that has no policy on if minors can offer their own consent for prenatal care.
The other states are Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Minors are allowed to receive emergency procedures without consent, but not ones that are considered elective.
And an epidural and non-emergency c-section are considered to be elective.
This means minors who are going into labor are not allowed to opt for pain relief unless their legal guardian is present to give the permission.
Critics of these laws are saying it prevents minors from getting necessary treatment during their pregnancy that could be beneficial to both the fetus and the mother.
Dr. Michael Cackovic, an obstetrician at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told NPR that he sees a teenage mother every couple of months who is unable to receive an elective treatment such as an epidural.
‘First of all, from a labor and delivery standpoint, you don’t like to see anybody uncomfortable,’ Cackovic said.
In 2015, 23 in every 1,000 teenage girls ended up pregnant, which is eight percent lower than teenage pregnancy was in 2014.
But Ohio was higher than the national average with every 25 in 1,000 teenage girls ending up pregnant, making for 25 percent of female minors in the state with a large gap in health care coverage if their guardian wouldn’t give it.
To complicate the matters, minors are not allowed to file for emancipation in Ohio.
They are only allowed to do this if their guardian is deceased.
This makes it impossible for them to fight for their own health care rights if their legal guardian won’t do it for them.
Lawmakers in Ohio are pushing a state bill through the house that would fix this oversight in the law and allow minors to provide consent through delivery.
If this passes, teenage mothers would have the ability to get an epidural during delivery without their guardian present.