Let Texas Teen Parents Consent to Their Own Health Care
At Healthy Futures of Texas, we help teens prevent pregnancy, and we support the young families who are already here.
Teen parents tell us they want to be the best parents they can be. But taking care of a child means being able to take care of yourself, and Texas sometimes makes that hard. Right now, a 17-year-old mother can consent to heart surgery for her baby, but can’t consent to a checkup for herself.
Healthy Futures is working to change that. We’re championing a bill that would let teen parents under 18 consent to their own health care.
What does Texas law currently say?
Teen parents are often living very adult lives, caring for their baby while studying, working, and often managing their own household. Many other states recognize this and give teen parents the right to consent to health care – but not Texas, where we have more teen parents than any other state in the nation.
Under the Texas Family Code, a minor who is under the age of 18 has the right to consent to medical care for their baby. Minors can also consent to prenatal and delivery care – but that right ends with the pregnancy, meaning teens can’t even consent to immediate postpartum care. After a teen gives birth, if she gets sick with an illness that she could potentially share with her baby, she legally can’t go to the doctor on her own. If she wants birth control to prevent another unintended teen pregnancy, she needs the consent of her mother – the baby’s grandmother – in order to get it.
What happened last session?
In the last legislative session, HB 2159, filed by Rep. Erin Gamez, would have allowed minor teen parents to consent to their own health care.The bill passed unanimously out of committee and passed the House 115-25 with strong bipartisan support, but ran out of time in the Senate. Rep. Gamez has committed to refiling the bill, and we’ll fight to push it across the finish line in the coming session, which runs from January – May 2027.
How many young parents would be impacted?
In 2024, there were 5,595 births to Texas minors aged 10-17 – more than any other state in the nation. While a majority of these births were to 17-year-olds, 27% were to 16-year-olds, 11% were to 15-year-olds, and 4% were to girls aged 14 or younger.
Why is this important?
In a perfect world, all teenagers would have parents who cared for them, supported them, and responsibly managed their health needs. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Many teen parents have experienced neglect from their own parents. One provider shared a story of a 14-year-old whose own parents didn’t even show up to the hospital as she was giving birth. Others have parents who are loving and supporting, but are facing their own challenges that make it hard to care for the teens or go to doctor’s appointments with them.
This change could also help address our state’s high incidence of repeat teen births. Texas has the highest overall count of repeat teen births in the nation, and one of the highest rates. Among teens under the age of 18 who gave birth in 2024, 8% already had another baby, and 1% already had two or more children. Additionally, many 18-year-olds in Texas have repeat births after getting pregnant for a second time at the age of 17. In about a third of these repeat teen births, the girls either didn’t start prenatal care until the third trimester, or had no prenatal care at all.
Teen parents can raise happy, healthy families, but they can’t do it if they can’t see a doctor. A young mother trusted to make life-or-death decisions for her baby should be trusted to make decisions about her own health. When the Legislature convenes in January, we’ll be working to make that the law.
