Misty Media Sex Blog

January 31st 2006, 22:46 Jeff Sela

Sue Axon lost her case against the High Court last week, failing in her attempt to force doctors and nurses to inform her if any of her daughters wanted to have an abortion.

The guidelines will remain the same, for the time being. Children under the age of 16 can get confidential advice about STDs and pregnancy, and even have an abortion without their parents being informed. A doctor has to consider them to be sufficiently mature to make the decision. It may not be nice that this is necessary, but the fact is that not all children would be willing to discuss this sort of thing with their parents, and not all parents would deal with it reasonably.

The government is considering some much less radical changes to the guidelines in the future, and is running a consultation on how health professionals should handle particularly tricky cases.