ISTBO- Bring Me A Knitting Needle
This is Sue Axon. Sue thinks the law needs to be changed so parents must be told if their under 16 year old daughter has an abortion. Sue had an abortion once, and later regretted it. She wants to know if her teenage daughters ever want an abortion, presumably in the light of what she's said so that she can persuade them not to. Sue for some reason thinks she has a right to tell another female whether or not to have a child that person has already expressed a wish not to have. Sue doesn't care about the consequences of her campaign for the people who actually matter in this situation: young scared girls who need help and for whatever reason can't turn to their parents for it.Sue doesn't care about the daughters of abusive, controlling, or simply strictly religious parents, disowning, beating or killing their daughters. (Don't think it couldn't happen, "honour" killings are on the rise.) She doesn't care about the daughters of parents who disapprove of abortion and would prevent their daughter having an abortion the law says she has a right to. She doesn't care that they may prevent their daughters from having these abortions by a selection of mental and/or emotional blackmail/pressure amounting to abuse, physically preventing them from leaving the house, or use of physical violence. And should doctors tell one parent or both? Sue doesn't care that in litigation Britain, doctors may feel they have to inform both parents if they inform one, thus giving information to some parents who have been kept apart from that daughter for very important reasons. She doesn't seem to think that sometimes there are very very good reasons why a girl would not tell a parent she was sexually active, let alone pregnant.
She doesn't care about the girls who will be so terrified of the consequences from their parents that they will have riskier backstreet abortions. She doesn't care that a girl who can't tell anyone she's pregnant or get an abortion under the law of patient confidentiality may end up staying pregnant and giving birth without any of the appropriate medical assistance pre- and post-natal. She doesn't care about the babies of the girls who give birth secretly then abandon their baby. She doesn't care that her desired law change is the thin end of the wedge that ends with girls not being able to get contraception without their parents knowledge (ie permission) and causing even more teenage pregnancies.
Sue doesn't seem to think that if you have a daughter who is under sixteen, who has managed to go out, have sex and get pregnant entirely without your knowledge, you are A BAD PARENT. You have failed to teach your daughter morality, failed to teach your daughter how to stay safe and healthy, failed to establish and maintain a relationship with her where you can communicate honestly about things, and needn't go pretending you're all concerned when the shit hits the fan. There is no 'right to know' about your child's emotional or sexual development, you cannot force anyone to reveal this part of themselves. If you were a halfway decent parent, you wouldn't need to talk about your 'right to know', becuase you'd know, or there'd be nothing to know. These are very young girls, and they should damn well know better than to have sex at their age, because you should have taught them that. If they do have sex, they put themselves into the category of 'old enough to take the consequences'.
Whether Sue wins or loses, if one of her teenage girls does ever get pregnant, she'll know that she can't tell her mother, because her mother will want her to keep the baby. If her mother has won this little campaign of hers, she'll know she has no way out. She'll know that if it ever gets out that Sue Axon's daughter had either an abortion or a baby underage, it'll be all over the papers.
I hope Sue's daughters have someone other than their mother to talk to.
I hope the court tell Sue where to stick it.


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