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In re D. (A
Minor)
(Wardship:
Sterilisation)
[1976] Fam
185
England
Official
Solicitor
The likelihood was that
she would have
sufficient capacity to
marry. Her widowed
mother, worried lest D
might give birth to a
baby which she was
incapable of caring for
and which might also
be abnormal, wanted D
to be sterilised.
11
Sterilisation by
hysterectomy
declined.
Deprivation of basic human right to
reproduce not justified in an 11
year old girl with ‘dull normal
intelligence and epilepsy.’
Possibility of relationship and
marriage in the future.
Majority of medical evidence
suggested that sterilisation was not
appropriate in this case.
Proposed operation =
deprivation of a woman's
basic human right to
reproduce.
to perform an operation for
non-therapeutic purposes on a
minor not within doctor's sole
clinical judgment.
Wellesley v. Duke of Beaufort (1827) 2
Russ. 1,20. ‘It has always been the
principle of this court, not to risk the
incurring of damage to children which it
cannot repair, but rather to prevent the
damage being done.’
230