Here in the USA "Informed Consent" is a standard medical legal term referring to the legal ability or lack thereof of a patient to give consent for healthcare treatment. It restricts the ability of a person to give such consent if they are an underage minor or are mentally unfit.....such people are deemed unable to give consent because they are judged as being cognitively immature or impaired. As an example, if a healthy-appearing seven year old child were to walk into a medical clinic and request a non-emergency, elective cosmetic surgery procedure to be performed upon them, their lack of rising to the status of being able to deliver informed consent would be one of the reasons why staff would be barred from performing such a procedure upon the child. Another example could be seen in the case of an adult patient who is mentally altered due to a preexisting condition, drugs or alcohol who is in a life-threatening accident yet refuses emergency medical care. Such a person is also deemed unfit to make an informed consent decision due to his altered mental status and care would proceed despite the patient's objections, under the legally supported premise that an unimpaired person would want his or her life to be saved.
From the article:
MPs will propose that women be allowed to seek an abortion on the basis of informed consent – dropping the requirement for two doctors’ signatures – and perform the second stage of a medical termination at home rather than at a hospital or clinic.
They also want nurses rather than doctors to be allowed to carry out abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, up to 12 weeks.
Assuming that "Informed Consent" has a similar meaning in the UK legal arena as it does here in the USA, which I suspect it does, this would mean that an apparently-unimpaired woman of legal age would be able to get an abortion after seeing only a nurse.
Here in the USA, a person can become a Registered Nurse after a two-year College Nursing program, which would deliver an Associate college degree..
Correction....the second example that I gave above involving the impaired accident victim would actually fall under the rules of “implied consent”, which refers to the understanding that an unimpaired person would want their life to be saved. A better example of an impaired adult falling under informed consent rules would be if that impaired adult were to walk into a clinic and request an elective procedure....such a person would be judged as being unable to understand the potential hazards of the procedure as explained to them by the healthcare provider, and as such would not be able to give informed consent.
Sorry for my error :-)
Well, not exactly. If they're a minor, they get the abortion anyway (unless they're very, very young - like your 7 yr old - in which case the court orders it) because these "clinics" do not notify the parents, regardless of the law. A huge number of the abortions they perform on minors are on girls who were impregnated by someone at least 12 years older than the girl (Mom's "boyfriend," etc.). And of course they never report it.
People in most parts of the US can get an abortion after seeing the receptionist. Forget the nurse.