"I spent 18 years campaigning against them." That line about the Conservative Party dates the only telephone conversation that I have ever had with Victoria Gillick. I have never met her. Yet I am thinking of her today.
As in the Gillick case, a Conservative Government with an enormous majority, and with the particularly strong support of the party's right wing, has fought tooth and nail. But Keira Bell has prevailed over this Government, and that might be the end of Margaret Thatcher's offensively named "Gillick competence".
Following a ruling that children cannot give consent to puberty blockers, castration, and so forth, then we can move to raise the age of consent to 18 while outlawing the performance of abortion or the prescription of contraception below that age without parental knowledge and consent.
If at all.
Unless there were some medical condition, such as certain menstrual pains, for which the Pill happened to be the best available treatment, then what sort of parent would consent to put his underage daughter on the Pill? Why would he want that?
I am the Independent parliamentary candidate for North West Durham. What are you doing?
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