Ensuring Access to Contraception for Minors
Background
Young people have long faced inequitable access to essential sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. In recent years, the threats to minors’ access have increased as new policies, based on weak or no evidence, further restrict young people’s bodily autonomy.
Federal and state policy play a critical role in shaping young people’s access to contraceptive care by driving the availability, affordability, accessibility, and confidentiality of services. Social and cultural trends like online mis- and disinformation and parental rights also inhibit minors’ contraceptive access.
As SRH legal experts, policy advocates, healthcare providers, researchers, and others continue to identify strategies to advance minors’ access to contraception, it will be critical to anchor these efforts in the most recent evidence alongside input from young people.
CECA is leading a project to synthesize available evidence on minors’ access to contraception, understand the impact of current developments, and inform collaborative efforts to advance minors’ access.
Why is this work important now?
Ongoing threats to publicly funded family planning programs, the confidentiality of healthcare services, and the availability of high-quality, comprehensive health information create distinct and significant barriers for young people and minors.
We must work to safeguard, support, and expand minors’ contraceptive access as part of the broader effort to secure the right to contraception for all and advance sexual and reproductive health equity (SRHE).
This work helps inform efforts to improve contraceptive access for young people, identify gaps in the existing literature, and ensure that strategies to advance minors’ access reflect their own lived experiences.
Approach
CECA conducted the following activities:
Conducted a literature review that synthesizes and summarizes relevant evidence on key policy issues shaping minors’ contraceptive access and related social, behavioral, and health outcomes
Engaged a diverse group of stakeholders, including young people, in technical expert discussions and Lived Experience Panels to contextualize literature review findings, provide critical insight on opportunities to advance work in this area, and ensure the work is guided by principles of SRHE
Developed outputs to explain the state of the evidence on minors’ access to contraception and future implications for a range of audiences in the field, including legal and policy experts, healthcare providers, reproductive justice leaders, researchers, and others
All approaches to advance contraceptive access must be holistic and prioritize individuals’ personal values, desires, and decisions—including the choice to become pregnant or parent—regardless of age, income, or other sociodemographic characteristics.
Resources
Policy Topics Affecting Minors’ Access to Contraception: A Summary of the Evidence
TThis report presents a synthesis of findings from CECA’s literature review on key policy issues that shape minors’ access to contraception. The breadth of evidence summarized in this review can help guide efforts focused on improving young people’s contraceptive access in the U.S., such as litigation strategies, policy responses, and research activities.
Issue Briefs
These briefs will focus on each policy issue described in CECA’s summary of the evidence, integrating takeaways from the research, technical expert discussions, and lived experience panels.