Our children and the pill why a mother must know

THERE ARE 14 for breakfast every morning in the Gillick household, with the ten children (aged 15, 13, 12. twins of 11, nine, six, five, three and one) and two lodgers whose rent helps towards the rates on their rambling house. Then there are the guinea-pigs to feed.
So, with her busy daily round, Mrs. Victoria Gillick is a surprising person to take on single-handed the Department of Health and Social Security in the High Court. When I spoke to her, after the failure of her case to prevent the giving of children tinder 16 contraceptives without their parents' knowledge, she explained some of the reasons why an ordinary, if energetic, mother like herself should challenge the power of state bureaucracy.
She possesses an almost Chestertonian confidence in the good sense of the ordinary people of England. "This country is one of the most civilised because it never has been fond of state control. There are always people, like those in East Anglia, who just rebel against it. The Government proposes, and the people argue about it. In the end, common sense will out people simply will not stand for it."
"I am not a doom merchant," she says. "This is not the beginning of the end — it is just the beginning of a very English process."
She is ready to go on with her cause through the Appeal Court, the House of Lords or even the European Court, sustained by the encouragement of parents throughout the country and by her religious faith. But here, she is careful to distinguish. "I am not doing this because I am a Roman Catholic. My faith gives me inspiration and strength — but it is the same as Lech Walesa with trade unionism. Without faith we should be very vulnerable."
Mrs. Gillick at 36 does not have that exhausted look that many parents of two think a mother of ten ought to have. Her face is unlined, her brown hair piled on her head and fastened with a ribbon. She wears pendulant earrings with little enamel leaves at the ends. She is as arty as the wife of a graphic designer and co-tutor of a homerun drawing school ought to be.
As we sit drinking coffee in a London tea-room, a woman hurries up: "I recognised you from the television and I must congratulate you on what you're doing." That is the attitude of most of the 40 letters a day she has been receiving.
One letter came from a retired policeman who said: "As a young constable. I stood outside the Central Criminal Court and read the inscription over the door 'Protect the children of the poor and punish the evil-doer', For years this stood as my yardstick in the practice of my office."
He went on: "St Thomas More once said: 'If law were to become the instrument of fashion, which God forbid, then lawyers should pack up their books and go home and none of us will sleep easily in our beds.' " The law, Mrs. Gillick thinks. has fallen into the fashion of the 1960s. "At the moment contraception is almost like a civil right to some people. It has become part of their daily lives. Saying it is wrong is like trying to convince people that drinking tea is morally bad. For most people the argument was lost when procreation was separated from sexuality." Eventually the tide will turn against the anti-life mentality of contraception and abortion because of economic necessity, Mrs. Gillick predicts. She compares it to the ending of slavery when plantation owners no longer needed massive forced labour.
"You cannot provide the services you want for the elderly unless you have an up and coming generation. It will be they — my children's generation — who will wipe the dribble off our chins as we roll around in wheelchairs."
At present she fears that state-backed contraceptive campaigns are directed mostly against deprived people — and that means immigrant families among others. She received a letter from a proponent of family planning saying "A Muslim mother would presumably feel as strongly as you do and still have no right to compel her daughter to accept her beliefs." In her fight to have parents informed of what medications are being given to their children she has found firm support from the Muslim community.
Mrs. Gillick is concerned that the High Court judge who rejected her case does not realise the number of doctors who are prepared to encourage sexual activity between under16s, despite its illegality. In one letter from an active familyplanning clinic practitioner, Mrs. Gillick was told: "Many of the youngsters attend together and the boys show a great deal of concern." It is no wonder that Lord Devlin said after the High Court judgement last week that it "may well be socially the most important to come before the courts in this decade."
So far, Mrs. Gillick has received legal aid and nothing else for her court action. She feels she alone is up against the massed funds of the interested pharmaceutical companies the sort of people who sponsor racing cars. For her appeals she cannot expect legal aid, but already has had £500 in individual donations including one gift from a firm of solicitors. One man in a public house proposed to me setting up a fund for her cause.
Mrs. Gillick's solicitor warned her against getting too enthusiastic about her battle, lest she be hurt by failure. She says: "You cannot be cool if you're certain that what you're doing is right. I believe that if you simply present the truth, people will believe it."