Senate Bill 1329 Fails Idaho Minors

On July 1, 2024, Idaho’s State Senate enacted Senate Bill 1329, which requires healthcare providers to secure parental consent before treating minors. This bill covers all degrees and aspects of healthcare—sexual assault exams and birth control discussions, access to counselors, the distribution of Band-Aids, and everything in between—with the sole exception of emergency care when a minor’s life is in immediate danger.

 

The law presents many severe consequences for minors. Most notably, it obstructs access to medical care for minors whose guardians are abusive, unreliable, or unfit to make decisions for them. For these individuals, the control of their healthcare and physical wellness being in the hands of others poses a greater threat to them than if they were to decide for themselves. Sometimes, guardians don’t care enough about their wards to make responsible decisions, whether because of addiction, inebriation, unwilling step-parenthood, or some other factor. In other instances, the guardians themselves are the ones inflicting abuse on the minor. Giving abusive adults such power over minors’ health decisions and medical records invites the exploitation of a pivotal responsibility: these guardians’ choices often go against the needs and desires of the minors, who may better understand their medical needs and the gravity of their circumstances than their guardians. 

Bill advocates center their arguments on the valid concern that minors cannot make the most prudent, responsible healthcare decisions for themselves. Yes: In some cases, minors may, especially if they have addicted or abusive guardians, be able to make better decisions than their adults. However, more reliable than either a minor or a guardian’s judgment is that of a doctor’s, whose expertise is what allows for accurate diagnoses, pain-relief, and life-saving measures. Thus, it would seem logical for bill supporters to strive for the opposite of their new law. Instead of restricting the care that doctors can provide and demanding access to healthcare records from guardians, the focus should be on maximizing the quality, safety, and accessibility of healthcare to truly protect and support minors. 

Additionally, Bill 1329 significantly slows the healthcare process and wastes valuable time which could be used to treat patients. For example, The Washington Post featured 13-year-old pregnant Idahoan Aleah, whose mother was absent and whose grandmother—her legal guardian—was imprisoned for drugs. Her contractions were met not with examinations and treatment but with more than two hours of trying to contact these adults in an attempt to get the green light for Aleah to receive care. This inefficiency can be deadly—especially in serious and pressing medical cases like childbirth. Because of this bill, healthcare providers in Idaho now spend critical time during emergencies fighting over whether they are legally permitted to treat people, both endangering patients and wasting hospital resources in the process. 

In Idaho, the legality of treatment now supersedes treatment itself in priority. Idahoan healthcare providers fear legal consequences to the extent that they are even hesitating to distribute band-aids to minors, for this trivial act of “healthcare” could endanger their jobs.  Thus, the bill produces a dangerous mutation of the purpose of medicine: helping patients. 

Proponents of Bill 1329—advocates of the “parental rights movement”—justify the bill by highlighting the sanctity of the bond between a minor and their guardian. They argue that this law will enshrine a guardian’s role in their minor’s wellbeing, decisions, and future. However, the enactment of a law to solidify this power poses three problems. Firstly, it guarantees privileges to guardians at the expense of minors, who lose their rights to patient confidentiality. This trust—being able to communicate openly and truthfully with a provider—is so integral to healthcare that stripping it from minors would transform minors’ rights as well as how healthcare is practiced. In addition, the bill gives these privileges to every “guardian” in Idaho—including those not well equipped to make decisions for another person, especially a young, vulnerable one. This legally defines all minor-guardian relationships as identical, even though disparities exist which necessitate a case-by-case approach from doctors. Hence, a third issue: Weaponizing the law against minors’ autonomy, Bill 1329 turns the responsibilities of guardians towards their dependents into a restriction that prevents minors from getting the care they need. Guardians’ proclaimed mission of protecting and guiding minors thus becomes forced—the byproduct of a rigid law justifying each choice a guardian makes, rather than the reward of painstakingly built trust and support with a minor. While bill advocates claim to enhance the relationship between a minor and their guardian, a forceful policy only undoes this vision by restricting resources and opportunities that support a minor’s wellbeing.

In many cases—when minors have positive relationships with supportive guardians, or when the medical circumstances of a minor aren’t urgent—this law may be completely harmless. In fact, the bill even stems from good intentions of safeguarding minors. Thus, to advocates of the bill, these misgivings can seem like unfounded hypercriticism, aimed at the bill for the sole purpose of tearing it down. According to Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, critics were “stir[ring] up unnecessary strife and conflict” through extreme, misguided interpretations of the law, like with Aleah’s case. While the arguments presented in this article may reflect uncommon circumstances, their existence—the fact that certain groups of people are more likely to face medical hardships because of the circumstances they are in—demands a reevaluation of the law.

One possible solution would be to fully grant minors access to first-aid, healthcare related to sexual assault performed by a guardian, and counseling services without the possibility of referral to their guardians. This way, minors enjoy timely and confidential treatment, gain more autonomy and control over their health—especially if they have dangerous or irresponsible guardians—and learn to manage the responsibility of caring for their bodies. Perhaps even more importantly, these amendments would prove our capacity for reconciliation and empathy; it would grant one side a sought-after power but not at the other’s expense, and it would symbolize compromise between two seemingly incompatible ideals—and two ever-distancing parties.