Washington state has no mandatory parental involvement laws (also called parental notification or parental consent laws) for minors to obtain abortion services. It is important that teens can access confidential treatment for drug and alcohol rehabilitation as well as reproductive health services because many teens will forgo such care rather than involve their parents.

• Mandatory parental involvement laws do not improve family communication or help young women facing crisis pregnancies.
• Loving parents should be involved when their daughters face unplanned pregnancies, but politicians can’t create healthy families with legislation.
• Unfortunately, some young women cannot involve their parents because they come from homes where physical violence or emotional abuse is prevalent or because their pregnancies are the result of incest. In other cases, young women may not realize how supportive their parents might be.
• If a young woman cannot, for whatever reason, turn to her parents, society’s first priority should be to ensure that she is safe.
• At the national level, anti-choice members of Congress have consistently tried to enact legislation to create nationwide parental involvement requirements. Legislation has been offered that would prohibit anyone other than a parent, including a grandparent, aunt, adult sibling, or religious counselor from accompanying a young woman across state lines for an abortion if the home state’s parental-involvement law has not been met.