Though I couldn’t attend the teachers’ National Education Union conference this Easter, I have just read about the motion that was passed, ‘that pupils should be given information about abortion in the classroom’.
It was led by Jennifer Marchant, from the union’s Derby and Derbyshire branch, stating that: ‘This is about giving students information so they can make their decisions.’ Despite an undisclosed amount of UK taxpayers’ money going to the abortion industry, for some inexplicable reason, Ms Marchant still believes that we teachers need to give underage students ‘facts’ on how to procure an abortion. Ms Marchant must have missed the memo, because there are already countless underage girls having abortions across the country, most of whom do so without parental consent, once they are deemed ‘mature enough’ (whatever that means) by a doctor. In light of yet another child sex abuse grooming scandal revealed in Telford, it was remarkably insensitive of Ms Marchant even to suggest this motion.
Amongst the recent numerous shambolic findings by the Care Quality Commission in various Marie Stopes clinics, the one that should be of greatest concern to Ms Marchant is the lack of consent reported to be given by underage girls to abortion procedures and lack of training of staff to ensure consent was freely given, though we should correctly question how much consent a child under the age of sixteen (or even eighteen) can really give to a procedure and the consequences which she doesn’t yet have the maturity fully to comprehend.
Both Ms Marchant and the NEU have remained worryingly silent on the latest child sexual abuse horror in Telford and how abortion was used to cover up the continuous gang rape of a number of the children, as in other locations such as Rotherham. One report stated that regarding one particular victim, council files showed that amongst other professionals, teachers were fully aware about what was happening but did nothing and also failed to tell the police. This girl became pregnant six times in four years, had three abortions, one miscarriage, two babies by different fathers and lived in fear of violence. This should be of concern to Ms Marchant and the NEU, considering that almost all the girls who were raped in Telford, Rotherham and the other locations with endemic child sexual abuse were of secondary school age, meaning that it is very likely that these girls had teachers who were members of this very union.
However, we can probably assume that Ms Marchant and her ilk won’t be too interested in the pattern of abortions used to conceal child sexual abuse and lack of consent being given in clinics. She makes no comment on what we teachers should do about a revelation to us about an underage child who is pregnant, thus ignoring her duty of care.
I think we can also safely presume that the ‘abortion facts’ that Ms Marchant wants us teachers to impart will not include the tiresome details of scientifically accurate realities about a ‘foetus’, for example, being fully formed at 12 weeks and wriggling around in the womb. It is also unlikely that she will want us to discuss the factual nature of abortion procedures, nor the post-abortive consequences such as depression which have been outlined recently in a detailed comprehensive study by a medical expert.
Nor is she likely to be too concerned about other facts about UK abortions, including:
Babies left to die alone after being born alive during an abortion
Girls being aborted for being female, despite it being illegal
Babies with minor disabilities aborted to birth
Undisclosed amounts of taxpayers’ money being used
Increasing numbers of multiple abortions on the same women
Women being rushed to hospital due to botched abortions
Women delivering aborted babies alone after the RU486 abortion pill
Bonuses awarded for reaching abortion targets
Shambolic standards in government-funded clinics
Abortions being offered after 20-second consultations
Ms Marchant is encouraging us teachers to damage further the already tenuous link between many parents and children by giving underage girls advice on how to obtain an abortion without their parents finding out. She patronisingly presumes that abortion isn’t discussed in some children’s homes due to ‘lack of parental knowledge’, while failing to acknowledge that no responsible parent wants their child to be having sex at 13 or 14. Her reference to ‘cultural bias’ is unmistakably a swipe at parents with ‘traditional values’, ie those who may still have pesky ‘moral standards’, including parents with religious affiliations whose moral expectations haven’t yet been erased from modern ‘progressive’ society.
Ms Marchant has overstepped her responsibilities as a teacher and has failed to acknowledge that parents, not teachers, are the primary educators of children. We teachers should be concerned about any child seeking an abortion and instead of presuming that any such girl is in a ‘consensual relationship’ (as social workers in Rotherham seemed to believe), serious questions need to be asked. This abortion push of Ms Marchant also negates the legal obligation that we teachers have to report concerns of child sexual abuse as per our ‘safeguarding’ duties.
Overall, Ms Marchant is requesting that teachers be complicit in potential child sexual abuse, by asking no questions but giving abortion information to underage children. The legal age of consent in the UK has been reduced to a running joke, completely undermined by subsequent governments, doctors misinterpreting the Fraser principles (originally designed to be used sparingly for youths deemed mature enough to be in a sexual relationship, but now applied to any child who seeks contraception/abortion) but it is reckless and irresponsible of Ms Marchant further to dilute this legal obligation.
Considering that Marie Stopes services were temporarily suspended for under-18s and vulnerable adults, Ms Marchant needs to think carefully about encouraging teachers to provide information for children to access these clinics. Amongst all our other unofficial roles, including counsellor, psychologist and ‘British Values’ spokesperson, to name but a few, we teachers are now expected to procure underage clients for the already taxpayer-bloated BPAS and Marie Stopes abortion clinics, who have already repeatedly demonstrated that they are not fit for purpose but are motivated only by profits and targets.
