Oscar De Los Santos signed House Bill 2646 in January. The title was Children's Bill of Rights. The sentence underneath said a child "shall be considered competent to consent" to a list of medical services "whether or not the child is a minor and with or without the consent of the child's parent or parents."
Rep. Sarah Liguori put the name on the bill. De Los Santos, the House Democratic leader, put his name under it. So did Rep. Junelle Cavero, his Legislative District 11 partner in south Phoenix. They introduced it on Jan. 20. It got a second reading, sat in Health and Human Services, and never received a committee vote. The session adjourned June 13. Dead bills still tell you what a caucus was willing to write down.
A child would have had the right to request and receive confidential services for contraception, pregnancy testing, prenatal care, and "other pregnancy-related care." Sexually transmitted disease prevention and treatment sat on the same list. So did "substance use disorders or mental illness." Confidential, here, means the parent does not have to be told.
Arizona already lets a minor consent to treatment for a venereal disease. A physician who finds a 12-year-old under the influence of a dangerous drug can treat that as an emergency. Mental-health treatment of a minor still generally requires a parent. Skipping that consent, except to prevent serious injury or save a life, is a class 1 misdemeanor. HB 2646 was not a patch on those exceptions. It would have called the new list fundamental rights, and any law that got in the way would have had to survive the same strict-scrutiny test Arizona currently uses to protect parents.
The bill never says abortion. It does say "other pregnancy-related care" next to a competence clause that applies with or without the parent. Arizona still requires a notarized parent, guardian, or conservator, or a superior-court order, before an abortion on an unemancipated minor. If the sponsors meant a pregnancy test, they could have stopped at those words. They did not.
The school clause is the ESA fight in another statute. "Notwithstanding a parent's right to direct the child's education," a child would have had the right to enroll in a public school with in-person instruction. In June, Cavero and De Los Santos also signed HB 4132, the Democratic bill to put income and enrollment limits back on Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. One bill shrinks the off-ramp. The other writes the child a door back into the district even if the parent already walked out.
Cavero's 2024 House campaign paid Brianna Westbrook $14,000, the largest check in the file. Phoenix police later charged Westbrook in an alleged break-in involving a knife and duct tape. There is no conviction. There is also no public explanation from Cavero of what that money bought. A member who will not account for her biggest vendor is not the colleague you want writing other people's medical rules.
