Dispatch from Gilead, October 2013
by digby
The judge asked her, "... do you know that when you have the abortion, it's going to kill the child inside you?"
In a split decision released Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court rejected a 16-year-old ward of the state's request to waive parental consent to get an abortion, saying the girl had not shown she is sufficiently mature and well-informed enough to decide on her own whether to have an abortion.
The girl, who is not named in the opinion, was living with foster parents this year when a juvenile court terminated the parental rights of her biological parents, who had physically abused and neglected her. In a closed hearing this summer, she told Douglas County District Judge Peter Bataillon she was 10 weeks pregnant and asked for a court order allowing an abortion. She said she would not be able to financially support a child and feared she might lose her foster placement if her foster parents, whom she described as having strong religious beliefs, learned of her pregnancy.
She is competent to raise a child, however. Maybe she can become a prostitute to support the child. On the other hand, she is just a birthing vessel of no real importance so she can always just gestate the child for 9 months, go through forced chilbirth and them turn it over to someone else. She'll get over it.
Just the image of a group of old white men (and one woman) in black robes, sitting up on a dais, making such a personal, intimate decision like this from on high chills my blood. It's medieval:
By the way, a majority of the Nebraska Supreme Court are Democrats. And according to the article, it appears that the lone Democratic woman on the court sided with the majority in this case.
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