Parents of Teen Taken for Secret Abortion Want Culprit Jailed Longer
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 12, 2008
Atlanta, GA (LifeNews.com) — The parents of a teenage girl taken for a coerced secret abortion want more jail time for the culprit. They say 44-year-old Cindi Cook is getting off easy by serving just one year of prison time after convicted on charges of interfering with parental custody and violating the parental notification law on abortion.
Cook claimed she was the mother of her 16-year-old son’s girlfriend and got an abortion for the teen without her parents knowing.
The parents spoke with WSB-TV Channel 2 on Thursday about the ordeal. They can’t understand why the crime Cook committed is only a misdemeanor and they want to change the law to stiffen the penalty.
“It someone else does this they’re going to get punished for it. It’s not going to be a misdemeanor,” the girl’s mother, who didn’t want to be identified, told the television station. “She’s an awful person."
“It’s difficult to put into words what it has done to us,” she added.
The girl’s father, whose identify was also kept anonymous, told WSB-TV, “I just point-blank asked her, ‘How could you have done this?’"
The parents told the television station that their daughter told Cook she didn’t want the abortion, but Cook threatened to never let her see her son again if she didn’t relent.
The parents’ attorney, S. Fenn Little, said the abortion facility is also to blame for doing an abortion on a young woman who obviously didn’t want one.
"The actions of both Cindi Cook and the Northside Women’s Clinic have affected our daughter with much pain," he quoted the parents as saying.
“We feel like the clinic has some serious responsibility here as well," Little added.
County Solicitor General Robert James previously told AP that Cook’s actions were "reprehensible conduct and it will not be tolerated."
"It’s terrible when one parent takes another parent’s child to have an abortion," said James.
James said the Northside Women’s Clinic reportedly told Cook that it would do the abortion without the girl’s parents present and he indicated he may file charges against the center for violating state law.
Cook also paid for the abortion in question at the Northside Women’s Clinic because she didn’t want the girl to give birth to her son’s baby. She reportedly didn’t want the baby to interfere with her son’s college plans and pressured the teen girl to have the abortion.
