The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals gave a minor girl permission to abort her unborn baby without her parent’s consent in a ruling Thursday.
The decision reversed a lower court judge’s decision that the abortion was not in the girl’s best interest.
Parental consent laws such as the one in Alabama help protect unborn babies and young mothers from abortion. Like many states, Alabama requires girls under 18 to have a parent’s permission to have an abortion. However, a judicial bypass provision allows a minor to request a judge’s permission to have an abortion rather than a parent’s. The provision is meant for girls who come from abusive homes, but abortion activists often tell young girls how to take advantage of it.
Court documents provide very few details about the Alabama girl and her situation, as is typical in such cases.
According to court documents, the juvenile court judge decided that the girl was “mature enough” and “well-informed enough” to understand the weight of her abortion decision. However, the judge also said the abortion was not in her best interest.
Court documents do not describe why the judge ruled this way, but it is easy enough to guess. An abortion kills a unique, living unborn baby and can carry life-long risks for the mother, too. Women who have abortions are at greater risk of physical and psychological problems, including depression, suicidal tendencies, future preterm births, breast cancer and more.
Though the reports do not give the girl’s age, it is difficult to believe a young teen would be able to fully comprehend the potential impact of an abortion on her life and her unborn baby’s.
However, the state court ruled that the girl may abort her unborn baby.
Yellowhammer News explains more about the decision:
On August 16th, a minor in Alabama asked a juvenile court judge for such a waiver. The judge didn’t explicitly deny her request but did rule that while the minor was mature enough (meeting the first condition), the abortion was not in her best interest (condition 2). For this reason, the ruling was interpreted as a “no”, so the minor’s attorneys promptly appealed.
Yesterday, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals overruled the lower court’s decision, stating that the minor must only meet one of the conditions for a waiver to be granted, not both. In other words, because the juvenile court judge ruled that the minor met the first condition, the appellate court granted her the right to have the abortion without the consent of her parents.
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Polls show strong support for parental consent and notification laws that require a parent be involved in a minor’s decision to have an abortion. A Gallup poll found 71 percent of Americans support such laws.
Parental consent laws can help protect young girls from sexual abusers who often use abortion to cover up their crimes. The laws also help protect vulnerable teens from making a hasty, uninformed decision to abort their unborn babies – something they may later regret. And research shows that these laws help save unborn babies from abortions.
Despite the strong public support for these laws, abortion activists frequently help teens bypass these protective measures. In 2013, the National Right to Life Committee found in one state in a period of 4 1/2 years, there were 3,573 judicial petitions to bypass parents and only nine were denied.
NRLC’s Mary Spaulding Balch explained previously:
Parents are, for the most part, not given the opportunity to consent, they are not given the opportunity to be consulted, they are totally bypassed. Their minor daughter is given a secret abortion and they are then left in the dark trying to pick up the pieces of their injured daughter’s life not knowing where to begin. The abortion industry masterfully manipulates this judicial bypass loophole by getting their own attorneys appointed by the court to shepherd pregnant minors through the intimidating judicial system and the abortion is performed before anyone can take a breath.
