Many pregnant undocumented immigrants are ineligible for public insurance covering prenatal care. National and state policies can either help or hinder patients’ access to health care that is universally recommended by professional guidelines.

Preventing bad outcomes for teens and their offspring was the impetus behind confidential care for reproductive health. Requiring parental involvement created an obstacle to the provision of necessary care.

Doctors should do everything they can to protect an adolescent's confidentiality, but lying to the patient's parents is not acceptable.

When adolescents seek emergency contraception in the emergency room, social judgment on the part of clinicians can hamper treatment.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics' opinions on confidential care for sexually active minors and physicians' exercise of conscience in refusal of services.

Restrictions on employer-based health insurance coverage of medical services or treatments, whether motivated by religious prohibitions, political objections, or concerns about cost, degrade quality of care and undermine the patient-clinician relationship.

Qualifying conscience protections for institutions with requirements that they minimize hardship caused to the patient would prevent religious institutions from acting as a choke point on the path to services.

The range of opinions on the extent to which physicians should attend to their patients’ spiritual lives and the arguments that support those opinions.

Several recent court cases illustrate how some states are attempting to mandate physician reporting of all underage sexual activity as instances of child abuse.

Physicians should honor confidentiality whenever possible when screening and treating adolescents for sensitive health conditions such as substance abuse.