Politics
Monday January 23, 2006
UK Judge Denies Parents Right to Know About Abortions For Their Underage Daughters
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By Terry Vanderheyden
LONDON, January 23, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – UK parents have been told they have no right to know if their daughter is to have an abortion be given abortion-inducing drugs or contraceptives, according to a High Court judgement.
Mr Justice Silber told Sue Axon, who brought the case, that forcing a girl to tell her parents she is having an abortion “may lead her to make a decision that she later regrets or seek the assistance of an unofficial abortionist.”
Axon, a mother of five and post-abortion sufferer, said, “Having endured the trauma of abortion, I brought the case to ensure that medical professionals would not carry out an abortion on one of my daughters without first informing me,” according to BBC coverage. “I could then discuss such a life-changing event with her and provide the support she would need.” Axon said she had no plans for an appeal.
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said that parents will be confused and angry at Silber’s judgment today. SPUC general secretary Paul Tully commented: “Abortion, as well as killing an unborn child, can have long-term physical, social and psychological effects on young women – and this is acknowledged and emphasised by the judge. We believe that the judgment was right to stress these health risks, as well as acknowledging the social, moral, religious and cultural issues at stake.”
“However, abortions and abortion-inducing drugs are routinely provided for under-16 year-olds by the Department of Health, flouting the 1985 legal guidelines on provision of contraception and abortion to under-16s that the judge said were valid and of great importance,” Tully explained.
“The judgment is written in the assumption that the guidelines are widely known and carefully observed,” Tully added. “In effect the judge pays lip-service to the 1985 rules, while ignoring the contempt in which they are held by health officials.”
“The demands from the pro-abortion lobby that it should be allowed to provide young teenagers with abortions secretly (keeping GPs as well as parents in the dark) shows how brazen it has become,” Tully said. “Mr Silber’s judgment will encourage the pro-abortion lobby to become more vehement in its demands. Mr Silber’s inclusion of contentious statements, such as the claim that a ‘right to abortion’ exists in English law, is disturbing. It suggests that his thinking is dominated by those who campaign to create such a right by asserting that it already exists, and ignores Parliament’s decision in 1967 to legalise abortion only in specific situations, primarily of risk to the life or health of the pregnant woman.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Mother Challenges Teen Abortion, UK Parental Notification Law
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/05110806.html
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