Do parental notification laws have any effect on the rates of teen pregnancy? Looks like the answer may be, "yes and no". Todd Zywicki of the Volokh Conspiracy quote the abstract of a study:
Laws requiring minors to seek parental consent or to notify a parent prior to obtaining an abortion raise the cost of risky sex for teenagers. Assuming choices to engage in risky sex are made rationally, parental involvement laws should lead to less risky sex among teens, either because of a reduction of sexual activity altogether or because teens will be more fastidious in the use of birth control ex ante. Using gonorrhea rates among older women to control for unobserved heterogeneity across states, our results indicate that the enactment of parental involvement laws significantly reduces risky sexual activity among teenage girls. We estimate reductions in gonorrhea rates of 20 percent for Hispanics and 12 percent for whites.
That looks like a "yes". Where's the "no"?
While we find a relatively small reduction in rates for black girls, it is not statistically significant. We speculate that the racial heterogeneity has to do with differences in family structure across races.
If unwed teen pregnancy is a bad thing, it's in society's interest to prevent it. Notification laws seem to prevent at least some of it. But in order for notification laws to work, there has to be an intact family structure. Laws that promote strong families would also seem to be a good thing.
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