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54 Medico-Legal J. 3 (1986)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr54 and id is 1 raw text is: THE MEDICO LEGAL JOURNAL Founded 1901 1986 Vol. 54 Part One EDITORIAL Under-age girls and contraception - the GMC's latest guidelines: This is the third time in less than three years that the GMC has issued new guidelines to deal with the problem of under-age girls and contraceptive advice and treatment. It is certainly true to say that you can't please all the people (or all the doctors) all the time, but the new guidelines do seem to be a moderate and sensible compromise in a no-win situation. The first of the new guidelines were issued in early summer of 1983, only weeks before Mrs Gillick's case was heard before Woolf J in the High Court.1 Though welcomed by the BMA, others, including myself, (a middle-liner) were unhappy with the directive that if the patient refuses to allow a parent to be told, the doctor must observe the rule of professional secrecy in his management of the case. 2 This blanket muzzle on doctors did not allow for individual discretion in an individual case where parental involvement might have been the better course. A doctor who breached the guidelines would have to justify himself and therefore be disinclined to place his neck on the block. After the liberal judgment of Woolf J in 1983, the guidelines stayed put until the Court of Appeal delivered the best possible Christmas present to Mrs Gillick in 1984. Amid jubilation from those pro-Gillick supporters and dismayed protests from the BMA, family planning clinics and elsewhere in the medical press and media, the GMC had to withdraw its new guidance and replace it with interim guidance pending the appeal to the House of Lords. Doctors were not entitled to give treatment/advice on contraception (or indeed much else) to children aged less than 16 without their parents' consent save in an emergency situation. Confidence was not to be absolute - a girl of under 16 could not impose it on the doctor. However the guidance indicated that where a girl asked for treatment but did not receive any advice or treatment from the doctor, the doctor did not automatically have to inform the parents and indeed, that confidence should be respected where possible.

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