Mrs Gillick and the Wisbech Area Health Authority

In December 1984 Mrs Victoria Gillick was the mother of five girls under the age of 16. Four years previously the Department of Health and Social Security in a circular to area health authorities had advised that family planning clinic sessions should be available to everyone irrespective of age: that attempts should be made to persuade children under the age of 16 attending such clinics to involve their parents or guardians: and that although it would be most unusual to provide such children with contraceptive advice and treatment without parental consent, in exceptional cases it was for the doctor alone, <n the exercise of his clinical judgment, to decide whether contraceptive advice or treatment should be given to them. Mrs. Gillick sought from the High Court a declaration that the advice given in the circular was unlawful: she lost her case. She went to the Court of Appeal whose three judges were unanimous in reversing that decision, but who gave the area health authority leave to appeal to the House of Lords where the matter may be finally canvassed: what follows therefore examines the law as it now