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consent laws violate the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, unless they include the requisite “threshold showing of harm.” As a practical matter, this means that there must be an emergency, a significant harm or risk of harm before someone may make decisions on behalf of a child without a parent’s consent. Medical and other professionals already have this authority. Neither children nor parents have to consent to a child’s receiving treatment in a medical emergency where immediate intervention is needed to save the child’s life or avert serious harm. Proponents of child consent laws argue that there are some children who need the ability to consent to medical care, children whose parents can’t or won’t take proper care of them. But there are already measures in place to help children in those situations. State workers in Child Protective Ser-
vices (CPS) and Social Services may seize custody of children when necessary to protect them from severe physical and/or emotional harm. And where parents are unfit, their fitness can be challenged and their parental authority given to other persons or agencies that are capable of exercising proper care of the children when they are not. If current laws are letting some children slip through the cracks, then by all means let’s take steps to fix the problem, but enacting laws that violate the Constitutional rights of all parents is not a proper solution. It is, however, a rather convenient way for the pharmaceutical industry to bypass parents to administer vaccines and other therapies directly to children (who are not likely to say ‘no’ to a doctor). And while parents may opt out of unnecessary medical treatments for their child that they can’t afford, child consent
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