Teen pregnancies and young motherhood is an issue that spans education, politics, health, family life and more. It has received great attention recently with the federal decision to block over-the-counter sales of an after-sex contraceptive pill to girls under age 17. Given this ruling, as well as the creation of other new health-care legislation, what is the reality of teen pregnancy and teen reproductive care? How are our communities addressing this issue? Are there new barriers to birth control access and if so, what are they? To discuss this issue, we're bringing together experts from the fields of health care, psychology, politics and more.
Bio
Lisa Aliferis
For the past decade, Lisa Aliferis has specialized in producing medical reports for television, most recently at Dateline NBC. She also produced health reports for five years at KPIX-TV in San Francisco. As a 1996 Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellow, Aliferis examined issues related to end-of-life care. She spent months documenting the stories of three families and whose loved ones were hospitalized in an intensive care unit; the families struggled along with doctors in deciding how far to go with aggressive medical treatment. Aliferis is a graduate of Brown University.
Jane Mauldon
Associate Professor of Public Policy
Jane Mauldon earned her undergraduate degree from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and her Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where she studied demography and public policy. Her substantive interests are in welfare policy and child and adolescent health, including disabled children and adolescent pregnancy. Her teaching interests include health policy and economics, poverty and public policy, demography, and quantitative methods. She recently evaluated the teen-parent component of California's welfare reforms.
She has worked as a coordinator for Advocates for Abused Women in Carson City, Nevada and as an economic developer at the McDermitt Indian Reservation in Nevada. She has also worked as a researcher at the RAND Corporation in Southern California and was a teacher of English in Laos. Currently, she is serving as the chair of UC Berkeley's Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects.
Lynn Ponton
Dr. Lynn Elisabeth Ponton is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of the books The Sex Lives of Teenagers and The Romance of Risk. Her work in the area of adolescent risk-taking has had a high profile at a time of newfound sexual conservatism. Her media publications include MTV, Salon.com, 60 Minutes, and many more.
Lupe Rodriguez
Lupe Rodriguez is Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte.
Sophia Yen
Dr. Sophia Yen is the Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics-Adolescent Medicine for Lucille Packard Children's Hospital, Stanford School of Medicine.
A panel of medical professionals and health care providers discuss the state of reproductive rights, abortion, pro choice, pro life (especially regarding teens), and the role the issue will play in the 2012 Election.
(1973) Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that established a woman's right to have an abortion without undue interference from the government. A Texas law prohibiting abortions was challenged by an unmarried pregnant woman (pseudonymously named Jane Roe), and the court ruled in her favour, finding that the state had violated her right to privacy (see rights of privacy). Harry Blackmun, writing for the seven-member majority, argued that the state's legitimate concern for the protection of prenatal life increased as a pregnancy advanced. While allowing that the state might forbid abortions during a pregnancy's third trimester, he held that a woman was entitled to obtain an abortion freely, after medical consultation, during the first trimester and in an authorized clinic during the second trimester. The Roe decision, perhaps the most controversial in the Supreme Court's history, remains at the centre of the issue of abortion rights. Repeated challenges since 1973, such as Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, have narrowed the scope of Roe but have not overturned it.
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