As Parents Forbid Covid Shots, Defiant Teenagers Seek Ways to Get Them

Most medical consent laws require parental permission for minors to get a vaccine. Now some places are easing restrictions for Covid shots while others are proposing new ones.

Teenagers keep all sorts of secrets from their parents. Drinking. Sex. Lousy grades. But the secret that Elizabeth, 17, a rising high-school senior from New York City, keeps from hers is new to the buffet of adolescent misdeeds. She doesn’t want her parents to know that she is vaccinated against Covid-19. Her divorced parents have equal say over her health care. Although her mother strongly favors the vaccine, her father angrily opposes it and has threatened to sue her mother if Elizabeth gets the shot. Elizabeth is keeping her secret not only from her father, but also her mother, so her mom can have plausible deniability. (Elizabeth asked to be identified only by her middle name.)