Parents don’t know what’s best for a child, says charity
PARENTS have no right to judge what is best for their child, a state- funded sex education group declared yesterday.
The claim came from the former Family Planning Association, which said the idea that ‘parents know what is best’ for their children is out of date.
The charity was making submissions to the High Court, where Susan Axon, 51, is fighting for the right to be told if her two daughters are being given advice on sexual matters.
Yesterday the Daily Mail revealed how her elder daughter Joy, 16, told her mother three months ago that she was pregnant.
Mrs Axon, from Wythenshawe, Manchester, wants to overturn what she calls the ‘ horrifying’ government policy which allows girls under 16 to terminate a pregnancy without their parents knowing.
The FPA, as it is now known, is paid for with more than £1million a year in taxpayers’ money.
It is one of the organisations responsible for pursuing Tony Blair’s ‘ teenage pregnancy strategy’, which is falling far short of its targets in cutting pregnancies.
Its submission to the court – described by one barrister as ‘ astonishing’ – was in support of Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, who says confidentiality for under16s is vital for reducing teenage pregnancy.
It said the rights of parents ‘cannot override a child’s rights’. Instead, the views of health professionals should take precedence.
The FPA’s intervention means the case has become a key test of whether parents or the Government have the power to decide what is best for children.
Since the landmark Gillick judgment in 1986, the law has said parents should be kept in the dark over contraception or abortion for their children only in the ‘ most exceptional circumstances’.
But Government guidelines introduced in 2004 effectively ended this parental ‘right to know’.
Barrister Nathalie Lieven gave the FPA’s views in a submission to Mr Justice Silber in which she said things had changed in the past 20 years.
‘ There is no doubt whatsoever that a child has a right to confidentiality,’ she said, adding that the best interests of the child ‘are paramount’. A child could be in a family relationship in which she did not feel able to trust a parent ‘to deal with a situation in a helpful or supportive way’.
‘ They may be highly loving parents, or have extremely strict views on underage sex, or extremely strict views on abortion, or teenagers having babies.’
Even in ‘a perfectly loving family’, such factors might lead a child to feel she did not want to tell her parents in case family relationships were damaged.
Miss Lieven asked: ‘ Why then should a child search for help from a doctor in confidence, only to have that overturned by a parents’ assertion of rights? How can parental rights trump the right of the child, in that situation, to get the help she needs?
‘If a child does not want parents to know it is impossible to say it is in her best interests for them to be told against her will.’
That would ‘ completely ignore the autonomy of the child’, she said.
When it came to the implications of the advice given by doctors or health professionals, such as those working for the FPA, ‘ she is the judge – not her parent’.
Her intervention brought a fierce reaction in court from Philip Havers QC, representing Mrs Axon.
‘I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people in this country would support the proposition that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the best judges of a child’s welfare are his or her parents,’ he said.
‘I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people in this country would be astonished to be told that view was out of date and out of step.
‘One can ask the question, if parents are not the best people to advise their child who is? Is it the FPA? Is it social workers?
‘ Who provides children with the relevant advice, guidance and wisdom if not their own parents?’
Following the three- day hearing in London, Mr Justice Silber reserved judgment to a later date.