The rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children has long been a rallying cry of Christian conservatives—and teenagers pay the price.
Title X, the federally funded family planning program that provides confidential family planning services to teens, is once again under attack. In separate lawsuits, two Texas parents have alleged that by allowing their daughters to obtain contraceptives in the absence of their consent, the program has effectively divested them of their “God-given right to ensure their daughters remain virgins until marriage.”
This attack is on Title X is nothing new. The rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children has long been a rallying cry of Christian conservatives as they battle against the ostensible indoctrination of their children “with a secular worldview that amount[s] to a godless religion.” As they see it, a particularly pernicious aspect of this “godless religion” is the belief that “’teen promiscuity is … normal and acceptable conduct.”
Over the course of four decades, courts have consistently held that although Title X encourages parental involvement, it does not require it, based on the recognition that “confidentiality [is] a crucial factor in attracting teenagers to Title X clinics and reducing incidence of teenage pregnancies.”
Post-Roe, there’s been a proliferation of age-specific laws aimed at managing the sexual and reproductive health of minors—so the renewed attack on Title X, based upon on an entwined reverence for parental rights and female pre-marital chastity, comes as no surprise.
Notably, the parental rights movement has gotten a boost from groups such Moms for Liberty. Founded in 2021 with a primary focus on combatting “woke indoctrination” in public education through measures such as book bans and “Don’t Say Gay” laws, this “extremist group” has become more broadly dedicated to fighting for “the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”
Amplifying this surge at the national level, Project 2025, “the extremist blueprint for the next Republican president,” has identified the “cementing [of] parental rights” as a “top-tier” right, which is to be achieved through the enactment of a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights.
In 2020, Texas father Alexander Deanda, who is raising his three daughters to “abstain from pre-marital sex” brought a federal lawsuit claiming that Title X violated his parental rights under the state’s law by enabling them to obtain contraceptives without his knowledge or consent in contravention of his religious beliefs. The notoriously conservative antiabortion judge Mathew Kacsmaryk agreed that Title X effectively nullified his right as a Christian parent to control his daughters’ access to contraceptives in accordance with Texas law requiring parental consent for medical care.
Given the case is once again before Kacsmaryk, and potentially the Fifth Circuit, this evisceration of Title X is a likely, if not forgone, outcome.
In March of 2024, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which law professor Stephen Vladeck characterized as “’the Trumpest wing of legal thought’” in a recent New York Times article, issued its decision agreeing with Kaczmaryk that Title X does not preempt (take precedence over) the state’s parental consent mandate.
Accordingly, in addition to having the eighth highest teen birth rate in the country, Texas currently enjoys the apparent distinction of being the only state that requires parental consent at its Title X clinics.
As reported in the Texas Tribune, this “radical rewriting” of Title X protocols represent a “huge shift for clinics and the clients they serve,” with, for example, Patricio Gonzalez, the CEO of a Title X clinic in the Rio Grande Valley, reporting an immediate drop in numbers.
“When [teens] see a negative change in the program, they tend to stay away,” Gonzalez said. “And they spread the word.’”
In a state without a required sexual education program, this “staying away” as a consequence of a parental consent mandate is likely to have a negative ripple effect beyond the loss of access to contraceptives. With family planning clinics serving as a “lifeline” for teens, said Gonzalez, an appointment for birth control offers them counseling “on everything from contraception and sexually transmitted infections, to healthy relationships, [and] consent” and may be the first time a teen has “thought about how reproductive health decisions can impact their future decisions.”
Deanda prevailed—with respect to the legal vindication of his religiously inspired interest in preserving the sexual purity of his daughters—through the court’s ruling requiring Title X clinics in Texas to comply with the state’s parental consent mandate. But due to the procedural posture of the case, the court did not actually invalidate or enjoin Title X’s non-consent rule.
Enter: the state of Texas and Carmen Robles, a second Texas parent intent upon “raising her daughters in keeping with Christian teaching on sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage,” to complete what Deanda had begun—namely, the invalidation of Title X’s “non-consent” rule.
To this end: In August of 2024, they filed the second federal lawsuit alleging that Title X’s non-consent rule violates the rights of every parent in the United States who wishes to be informed of their kids’ accessing or attempting to access prescription contraception and other family planning services, or who wishes to prevent their children from obtaining or using these drugs or services without their consent.
Of critical concern to them was Title X’s purported promotion of “sexual promiscuity” and its weakening of the ability of parents to “raise their children in accordance with the teachings of the Christian faith, which prohibits pre-marital sexual activity.”
Claiming that the usurpation of parental rights was an abuse of federal authority, the parties are asking the court to “hold unlawful and set aside” Title X’s non-consent rule.
If successful, all states, rather than just Texas, would have the authority to require parental consent as the gateway to federally funded family planning services. Given the case is once again before Kacsmaryk, and potentially the Fifth Circuit, this evisceration of Title X is a likely, if not forgone, outcome.
The right at stake in this case is a statutorily based one, rather than the more sweeping constitutional right to abortion that was at stake in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. However, both cases represent the conservative effort to dismantle existing federal protections for reproductive and sexual health in favor of entrusting the matter to individual states to control as they see fit.
It takes little predictive power to see how this will play out: States that have banned abortion are the ones most likely to require that teens have parental consent in order to obtain family planning services from Title X clinics. In short, rather than keeping young women virgins—as hoped for Deandra, Robles and the state of Texas—pregnant teens will instead be forced to bear children by way of legal fiat.
At Ms. magazine, our mission is to deliver facts about the feminist movement (and those who stand in its way) and foster informed discussions—not to tell you who to vote for or what to think. We believe in empowering our readers to form their own opinions based on reliable reporting. To continue providing you with independent feminist journalism, we rely on the generous support of our readers. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today if you value the work we do and want to see it continue. Thank you for supporting women’s voices and rights.
