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Angela Watkinson speech Wednesday 14th March 2007

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.
The rates of unplanned pregnancy, abortion and sexually transmitted infections among under-age children in this country are shamefully high. They are higher than those in most other countries in the developed world, and certainly higher than those in any of our western European neighbours. There is an obvious reason for that: all the indications are that many children are becoming sexually active well before they are emotionally or physically mature. In children under the age of 15, the estimated figure is more than 40 per cent.
The Government have expressed concern about the situation, but their policy direction to try to tackle the problems has been misguided. Sex education in schools focuses heavily on the assumption that under-age children will be sexually active come what may and on providing all the contraception information that they need to avoid pregnancy and infection. However, statistics show that that approach is not working. It has done little to deter pupils from engaging in precocious sexual behaviour. Indeed, the plethora of information on contraception has given encouragement to children through false assurances that there will be no unwanted outcome. That is hardly surprising, as immature young people cannot be expected to make wise adult decisions. Interestingly, most schoolgirls who become pregnant or contract a sexually transmitted infection claim to have used contraception.
The aim of the Government’s teenage pregnancy strategy, launched in 1999, was to halve teenage pregnancies in 10 years. That was a laudable aim, but by 2005 the rate had dropped by only five per 1,000—from the 1998 figure of 46.6 to 41.1 per 1,000. The figure for teenage pregnancies in 2005 reached 7,464 and some new mothers were as young as13. Even the provision of the morning-after pill free of charge and without parental knowledge has had virtually no effect on numbers. Indeed, it could have been said to have encouraged some girls to increase their risky behaviour. On a visit to one ofmy local health centres recently I learned that far from using the morning-after pill as an emergency treatment, the same young girls are presenting regularly. Such small progress offers no hope of the strategy achieving its goal by 2009. It is time totry a different approach.
Young people are already surrounded byconstant barrages of sexual images on television, in films, DVDs and magazines, and on advertisement hoardings—in fact, almost everywhere they turn. Clothing designed for pre-teenage girls often makes them look like provocative young adults. Sex and relationship education in schools should be used as an opportunity to redress the balance. Girls in particular need real-life warnings about the risks that they are taking with their emotional and physical health, and their future career and employment prospects. If the father of the child is an under-age boy, there will be no wedding and he will not be in a position to provide a home or financial support. The parents of the girl have to step forward, as from this point on full responsibility must be assumed by the girl and she will need their support as never before. How much better it would be if the parents had had the opportunity to divert their daughter from that course of action by being involved at a much earlier stage.
Under-age girls run a very real risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection, which may have a long-term impact on their reproductive lives. Almost 90 per cent of the children aged between 13 and 15 seeking treatment for sexually transmitted infections are girls. In north-east London, the incidence of chlamydia is one of the highest in the country. That sexually transmitted infection is different in that it is symptom-free, sogirls are usually unaware that they have it until much later in life when they are married and have fertility problems that mean they are unable to have a planned family. That often leads to years of distressing fertility treatment with very unpredictable results. One of the main contributory reasons to that condition is too early sexual activity.
Pregnancy often comes unexpected and unplanned and the girl, who is still a child herself and still at school, finds that her life has suddenly taken a different course. A child who has been engaging in adult behaviour suddenly faces serious, life-changing decisions when she does not have the adult skills or resources to cope. Many parents are unaware that their child is sexually active and the news that she is expecting a child of her own comes as a huge shock. The girl may seek advice elsewhere, for example from her GP, a health centre or a family planning service, to avoid facing the music at home.
Advice on abortion may be provided and accepted without the parents’ knowledge. Just a few weeks ago, I received a letter from a constituent who had been required to leave his place of work, find a chemist and buy a tube of antiseptic cream, go to his son’s primary school where the child had grazed his knee, apply the cream and then return to work. Apparently that procedure was too risky to be undertaken without parental involvement. We live in a contrary world that rates the application of cream to a grazed knee, or a visit to the dentist, for which parental consent is also required, as a greater risk than an abortion on a minor.
For parents, the discovery that their daughter had an abortion that might havebeen avoided if they had not been kept in ignorance can be an even greater shock. The long-term emotional and physical impact of an abortion can be serious, and it is the parents who will provide care and support for their daughter. Those same parents might well have decided to support their daughter in bringing up her child, once they had overcome the initial shock of discovering their child’s pregnancy, and had had time to reflect.
That brings me to the main purpose of the Bill. The provision of lots of sex information has not worked so sex information should be replaced with sex education. In education about the real risks involved and the likely outcomes, the advice to under-age girls should be to abstain, to wait, to delay, and to resist, rather than to use contraception and believe that they will not come to any harm. Parents need to be part of that process. In1984-85, under the Gillick ruling, and more recently in the United States, where parental involvement is required, the evidence showed that the number of unwanted pregnancies did not go up, but the number of sexually transmitted infections went down.
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.
There is an important caveat in the Bill to protect a child whose parents might be violent or abusive. In those circumstances, where the child finds herself in need of advice, practitioners may appeal to the courts, in camera, for a decision to be made. The Bill would be an important step in trying to reduce the number of unwanted teenage pregnancies and abortions among under-age children. It attempts to do that by strengthening families and entitling parents to be involved in making important decisions.