Parental Notification Bill vote
In a nutshell
A vote on whether practitioners should be required to inform the parent or guardian of a child under the age of 16 who uses contraception or abortion services.
The details
On 14 March 2007 Angela Watkinson MP (Con) introduced a Ten Minute Rule Bill to make medical practitioners responsible for informing parents or guardians when they provide contraception or abortion services to children under 16. Under current law medical professionals are not obliged to do so, unless they believe the child is not competent (see Parental Notification Bill apologetic). Doctors are required to respect their young patients’ confidentiality, even if this results in parents being kept entirely oblivious of their daughter’s abortion.
Mrs Watkinson moved a motion in the following terms:
“That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require practitioners providing contraception or abortion services to a child under the age of 16 to inform his or her parent or guardian; and for connected purposes.”1
In her speech she went on to say:
“The decision to provide contraception or abortion advice or treatment to under-age children must involve the parents. It is the parents who have full responsibility for, and the greatest interest in, their children’s health and welfare and the closest long-term personal bonds with them. Parents have the best opportunity to guide their children to resist peer pressure, and to make wise decisions about their sexual behaviour and their future reproductive lives. Quite simply, parents have not just a right to know, but a need to know.”2
The Bill contained a caveat to protect a child whose parents might be violent or abusive.
The motion to bring in the Bill was rejected by 159 votes to 87. Being a backbencher’s Bill it was unlikely to become law anyway because the Government would not have allocated it sufficient Parliamentary time.
How we recorded the vote
- Voted for requiring practitioners providing contraception or abortion to a child under the age of 16 to inform his or her parent or guardian
- Voted against requiring practitioners providing contraception or abortion to a child under the age of 16 to inform his or her parent or guardian
- Abstained or was absent on the vote for requiring practitioners providing contraception or abortion to a child under the age of 16 to inform his or her parent or guardian