Sharing – How would a new bill requiring parental consent for mental health emergencies impact child sex abuse victims?
I’m not necessarily against parents being involved in mental health care decisions for their children, but I also agree with advocates who point this out:
“If a 14-year-old is being raped by a parent, they would have to ask the parent who is raping them for consent to go see a clinician,” Gemar said. “There could be punishment, there could be threats or more physical or sexual abuse that occurs because of that.”
If the bill becomes law, she said, that is a door closed for teens to be able to safely seek help.
One problem with blanket rules for everything is that there will always be a situation where the rule harms someone. Parental consent rules are one example. Sure, it’s great when parents are involved in their kids’ care. It’s ideal, even.
That assumes they have good parents, though. When the thing a kid needs protection against is the parent, you can’t demand the parent’s consent for that. It’s like letting someone drive drunk because they didn’t consent to being pulled over. Public safety demands that you stop them. Child abuse demands that you stop that and support the victim. Parents who are abusing a child don’t get to decide whether that kid receives mental health support. This bill seems to assume that in the ideal world, of course, a child being abused would not be under the care of that parent, and the parent would be in jail.
Those of us who survived child abuse know that we do not live in that world. Not accounting for that fact in this law could create harm to abuse victims. Haven’t they been harmed enough?
