Abstract Within the medieval Catholic Church, term ‘clandestine betrothal’ was associated with absence of witnesses, solemnities, and other formalities. Parental consent not a legal requirement for betrothal or marriage, which based on free decision spouses. However, Martin Luther held that will parties sufficient, because couple joined by God, God’s reflected in parental consent. intended pare...

BACKGROUND Obtaining a research participant's voluntary and informed consent is the bedrock of sound ethics practice. Greater inclusion of children in research has led to questions about how paediatric consent operates in practice to accord with current and emerging legal and socio-ethical issues, norms, and requirements. METHODS Employing a qualitative thematic content analysis, we examined ...

Child research is governed by legal norms in the National Health Act (2003) and the Regulations. There is increasing harmony between the two on many issues, including the conditions under which children should be enrolled in research. The most striking disjuncture in the ethical-legal framework remains the allowable consent strategy for child research, where the law requires mandatory parental ...

BACKGROUND Data sharing presents several challenges to the informed consent process. Unique challenges emerge when sharing pediatric or pregnancy-related data. Here, parent preferences for sharing non-biological data are examined. METHODS Groups (n = 4 groups, 18 participants) and individual interviews (n = 19 participants) were conducted with participants from two provincial, longitudinal pr...

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional an Akron, Ohio, ordinance regulating abortions because it interfered with a woman's right to obtain an abortion. The ordinance required that all abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy be performed in a hospital, prohibited physicians from performing abortions on unmarried minors under the age of 15 without parental consent or a c...

The age of maturity of children to consent for medical research is under debate, as different authorities regard the capacity of young teenagers as either satisfactory or not to grant consent without parental participation in the process. The present paper contrasts the generally accepted guideline for ethics in paediatric research in Canada with what the same children are allowed and expected ...