Parental responsibility has been a steady concern of this government. It thinks there needs to be more of it to tackle, in particular, truancy and anti-social behaviour. Parents who allow their children to bunk off school can even be sent to prison. So the fact that a 14-year-old girl can have an abortion without her mother's knowledge, let alone her consent, seems an absurd anomaly.
Michelle Smith's is an alarming story on every level: alarming that a 14-year-old is having sex at all, alarming that she got pregnant, alarming that she did not feel able to tell her parents, and at the very least thought-provoking that the medical authorities are under no obligation to do so, even though - as Michelle's mother pointed out - when she had appendicitis a year earlier, her mother had to give her specific consent for an operation.
Some claim that the rising number of under-16s involved in sexual relationships is because initiatives aimed at promoting safe sex have the unintended consequence of simply promoting sex. But the Netherlands shows the better the sex education, the later sexual experience begins and the lower the number of unwanted pregnancies. Here, one of the initiatives introduced since 1997 that have led to a steady fall in under-age pregnancy makes outreach services - like the one approached by Michelle - available in schools. Under the confidentiality guidelines established by the Victoria Gillick case 20 years ago, which ensure that young people have an adult to turn to who will not tell their parents, she was entitled to confidentiality both at the school clinic and the hospital to which she was referred. This is a principle worth defending. It follows that to maintain confidentiality, a young person must also be able to give consent for a medical procedure themselves, although they must, of course, be encouraged as far as possible to talk to their family.
It is a tragedy that Michelle now regrets the abortion. But the real breach of confidence was surely by the mother who consented to splashing her daughter's private life all over the newspapers.
