Florida Court Rules Pregnant Teen Is Too Immature for an Abortion

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The unflagging, enthusiastic opposition to abortion under any circumstances has brought the bright lights of hypocrisy shining down on many intolerant judges and other politicians, a vast majority of whom are members of the Republican Party.

A Republican Circuit Judge in Escambia County, Florida, recently ruled that a parentless 16-year-old girl who lives with a relative and is overseen by a court-appointed guardian - and was 10 weeks pregnant when she went before the judge - could not have an abortion because she "lacked the maturity to choose to have an abortion," a requirement for the procedure where minors are concerned.  The girl's guardian was in agreement with her request to have an abortion.

The matter, which was of urgency because Florida has a new law that bans abortions altogether after fifteen weeks, was appealed to the Circuit Court, and a three-judge panel there ruled unanimously this past Monday to support the first judge's decision.  The teen, who is known in court documents as Jane Doe 22-B, was to remain pregnant.

In Jane's original petition to the court, she stated that she was not ready to have a baby, did not have a job, was still in school, and the baby's father was unable to assist her - but those arguments did not sway any of the judge's involved in the decision to force her to remain pregnant.

Journalist Bess Levin writing in yesterday's on-line edition of Vanity Fair offered this stinging (and somewhat salty) critique of the Florida judicial system's treatment of Jane Doe, 22-B:

"It should go without saying, even though it apparently needs to be said, that it's completely fucking insane to declare that someone is not mature enough to make a decision to end a pregnancy, but is grown-up enough to go through the mentally and physically taxing work of growing and giving birth to a child, as well as the lifelong, never-ending work of raising one.   Republicans, of course, don't actually care about what being pregnant entails, seeing women as mere reproductive vessels, and they definitely don't give a shit about children once they are born.   On a somewhat tangential note, we'd also argue that knowing one is not ready to have a kid is actually a clear sign of maturity, setting aside the fact that just not wanting one should be reason enough."

That about sums it up.   A sixteen-year-old in Florida is mature and smart enough to know that she is not ready to be a mother, and a group of Florida judges feel that girl is not mature enough to seek an abortion - but she is mature enough to carry a fetus to term and then to spend the rest of her life meeting the physical and emotional needs of a child that she was never prepared to have.

Sounds about right.