By Rachel Rebouche, Law Fellow
National Women's Law Center
Melissa Anspach, age 16, walked into a family planning clinic a few days after having unprotected sex. She first asked for a pregnancy test, which was not available at that particular time, and on the advice of a friend, returned that same day to ask for emergency contraception (or the “the morning after pill”), which the clinic provided her. When her parents learned about the EC, they sued the clinic and the City of Philadelphia, which operated the clinic, arguing that they had a constitutional right to know when their daughter asked for and received emergency contraception. Anspach v City of Philadelphia (2007).
The Anspachs claimed that their right to provide parental guidance and their (and Melissa’s) right to religious expression were violated because the clinic did not encourage Melissa to call her parents or ask if her parents knew that she was about to take EC. All of the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit who heard her case, two Clinton appointees and one Reagan appointee, rejected their claims.
Melissa had every right to ask for EC, which she did without coercion and knowing full well the purpose of taking EC — to prevent pregnancy. The court held that the state has no duty to encourage a minor to inform her parents when she is exercising her own rights to access reproductive health care, particularly when it is clear, as it was in this case, that the minor is acting of her own volition. To hold otherwise would be to infringe upon a minor’s right to privacy.
The Third Circuit did the right thing. The court agreed with courts around the country: parents do not have a constitutional right to know when their daughters make their own contraception choices.
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