Consistency

Guiding Principle for Good Youth Reproductive Health Policy

Laws and policies affecting YRH should be consistent across sectors and from one document to the next. Although consistency is an issue for reproductive health policy more broadly, it is of particular concern for YRH because youth policy and programming in most countries lacks a sectoral home. Currently, too many countries have a scattershot approach to YRH policy, with the result that policies lack consistency and often contradict each other. Age of consent is one reflection of this contradiction, with many countries having different age of consent for marriage, consensual sex, VCT, employment, etc.

Resources

Minors and the Right to Consent to Health Care. This AGI publication demonstrates some of the difficulties in establishing consistency in consent laws in the United States.