Sue Axon
Posted on 01/23/2006 1:25:55 PM PST by Stoat
A mother-of-five has lost her High Court battle for a parent's right-to-know if girls under 16 are getting abortion advice.
Sue Axon, 52, suffered a legal defeat with implications for parents across the country.
The case raised the question of whether parents of girls seeking official guidance on abortions should be told about any proposed advice and treatment beforehand.
Mr Justice Silber, sitting in London, ruled parents had no right to know unless the child decided otherwise.
He said forcing a girl to tell her guardians "may lead her to make a decision that she later regrets or seek the assistance of an unofficial abortionist".
Mrs Axon, who has two teenage daughters, had told the court an abortion 20 years ago caused her "guilt, shame and depression for many years".
After the ruling, she said: "I hope these proceedings will help parents and children to recognise the trauma of abortion and to talk openly about sexual matters."
The single mother from Manchester had also wanted parents to be told of advice or treatment for sexually transmitted infections.
She said Department of Health guidance on the matter infringed her parental rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
But clinics warned removing confidentiality would lead to a rise in unwanted pregnancies.
The UK already has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe.
In 2003, there were more than 181,000 abortions. But in 2004, that figure rose above 185,000 - 3,756 of them were for girls younger than 16.
So...if a minor commits a crime and harms or damages someone else's property, the parents can be held responsible. Or, if a minor wants to leave a soccer game, or school activity early, it requires parental approval in most cases. But if that same minor wants to KILLtheir unborn child, the parents (grandparents to the developing child) have no right to know or intervene in such a decision?
As I said...pure Bravo Sierra and insane.
Kill their baby and the parent's grandchild, don't be silly of course you don't need to notify anybody over a usless piece of cell matter.
Up is down, black is white the left really are a consistant bunch aren't they?
The insane liberal-socialist mindset. You can't make decisions regarding your children, but the government can. This pandora's box will eventually lead to euthanasia, and so much more.
Depends on the parents, frankly. I don't have much sympathy with parents who are running around doing their own thing, paying no attention to what their teenage children are up to, and then get all indignant when they somehow find out by accident that their teenage daughter got an abortion without mommy's permission. If you want to take responsibility for your children's lives, start by guiding them well, knowing them well, and knowing where they are, who they're with, and what they're doing. If your teenage daughter is running around having sex and visiting abortion clinics without your knowledge, you have clearly resigned from the role of "parent".
England is really disappointing on all things moral lately.
I have a question -
Is Great Brittian like the US in that medical proceedures (like setting a broken bone, apendectomy, and other similar proceedures) must be approved by parents?
I know that children cannot be given tylenol at school without parental permission. Students at the school where I attend can no longer even be assigned to detention hall unless the parents have been notified.
Yet a 14 year-old can get an abortion without so much as a mention to the parents. This is just plain insanity.
Nope...this decision, in any case, is an insane one. This mother wanted to know and be involved and she was prevented from knowing by the foolish and insane legal system regarding this issue.
Amen.
There's no mention in the article that either of this woman's daughters had or sought an abortion. The only abortion mentioned is her own. I suspect she's the sort of parent who knows where her teenage daughters are and what they're doing. Under the US legal system, she wouldn't have been able to bring this case, unless she had a direct personal interest in the outcome, but I'm not sure that's true of the UK system.
An absolutist approach to parental rights would find that once a girl is pregnant, SHE is the parent of the fetus, and should thus have an unfettered right to make any legal choice concerning its fate. If, for the sake of argument, you assume that the fetus is a legal person (which presumably would be the position of any parent seeking to block his/her daughter from having an abortion), then the pregnant girl's parents' relationship to the fetus is that of grandparents, who don't have legal rights to make decisions for their grandchildren.
I don't see any problem with the requirement of paerntal notification for detention. If a parent sends a child off to school for a day that is scheduled to end at say 3PM, and is expecting the child to return home, or go to another prearranged place, directly after school, the school has no business holding the child captive without telling the parents where the child is and why.
I also don't have a problem with restrictions on the school handing out medications to children. The children may have allergies that the school doesn't know about and the child isn't clear enough on to explain or recognize that a drug may be known by more than one name. And with Tylenol in particular, the active ingredient, acetaminophen, is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the US, often requiring transplants. A relatively small overdose can have this effect, especially on a child/teen who has been drinking alcohol.
What's idiotic is not letting the students carry and self-administer medications with the prior approval of their parents. Some parents have had to launch legal battles to overturn laws and regulations that prohibited their severely asthmatic or allergic children from carrying their asthma inhalers or life-saving epinephrine injectors with them, so as to be able to use them in time to prevent serious harm or even death. In some school systems, a child who can't breathe due to an allergic reaction or asthma is expected to get to the nurse's office and wait for the nurse to check records and find the medication and figure out how to administer it.
The liberals in this nation want to have it two ways...both of them their way. It is ludicrous that a society that requires a child to have all sorts of parental approval to have an aspirin or some other similar medication in school (and they should), would then turn around and say that the child can however decide to kill their own unborn child. As a father who has raised four children to adulthood, with a fifth fast approaching that age, teeens under the legal limit, and p[articularly under 16, are neither prepared or equiped to make such a decision...and they certainly should not be "coached" in such decision making by governmental or other social workers outside of their parents presence.
Sorry, but that dog don't hunt.
After the legal limit, I do view an unborn child as a human, that should be protected by the law. As such I believe abortion, outside of the very rare case when it is a clear choice of saving either the baby or the mother, should be illegal. In those cases, after a doctor has informed the family of the risks...then the mother and father (if he is in the home and available) should make the decision, hopefully with some faith-based counciling. If it is a child, that same decision should be made with the consultation of the parents or legal guardians.
But that's just my opinion.
I don't disagree with you at all - but I think you missed the point of my post --- that all those things require parental notification and/or permission - yet a child can get an abortion with ZERO parental notification, much less permission.
"Legal age" for what? The legal "age of consent" in most countries is well below the age of legal adulthood. So it's legal for a girl of 16 or so to choose to get pregnant without her parents' consent.
As for coaching, frankly I don't think parents are any more likely to push for the decision that the girl won't regret when she's older, than any other party. Parents values and beliefs are often very different from those of their adult children, and those values/beliefs had often diverged by the mid-teen years.
If a girl is of legal age of consent, then she should be legally allowed to consent to abortion just as she's legally allowed to consent to getting pregnant. Where younger girls are involved, I think that ideally a court should be involved no matter what, since a statutory rape or other serious problem is involved (I don't know if a pair of 12 year olds going at it qualifies as statutory rape, but it's a sign that something is very wrong with how the kids are being raised and supervised). The court should make as clear a determination as possible in the short time available, as to whether the parent(s) have been meeting minimum legal standards in caring for their daughter. If the answer is no (e.g dad is nowhere to be found, and mom is routinely out partying with the latest in her long series of boyfriends, and skipping her court-ordere drug rehab appointments, while her unsupervised 12 year old is out having sex), the parent(s) should not have a role in the decision, and should be facing charges, and facing loss of custody. Unfortunately, there are practical obstacles to that approach, primarily that there is nowhere better to put these girls (or similarly situated boys) if you take them away from their parents. Few foster parents want to take on adolescents who have a history of an active sex life, usually accompanied by drug and alcohol abuse, and group homes for adolescents are hotbeds of sexual abuse, both by inmates on other inmates, and by staff, and kids frequently run away from them and get into even worse trouble than they were in before.
No easy answers, but I'm in favor of early abortion in most cases for underage girls, because the realistic effect of the other option, in most cases, is simply perpetuating the problem. Most teen mothers are the daughters of teen mothers (and most teenage male criminals are the sons of teen mothers).
That assumes the parents aren't keeping track of where their daughter is. Unless we're talking about one of the few school systems which will have school personnel arrange for a student to have an abortion during the school day, providing transportation to and from the clinic, and then sending the girl home at the usual time at the end of the school day. That really shouldn't be happening, though I think in practice it's only happening in schools where most parents couldn't care less, are difficult locate, and don't respond to mail or phone calls from school officials. Unfortunately there are plenty of those parents.
Sorry, on this issue, we disagree fundamentally.
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