A British woman who nearly was forced to abort her unborn baby by a judge will be forced to be fitted with a contraceptive device instead.
Despite objections from the woman’s family and lawyers, Justice MacDonald ruled Wednesday in favor of contraception for the 24-year-old woman, who has mental disabilities, according to the Catholic News Agency.
The young woman is pregnant and soon due to give birth to her baby. According to the judge’s ruling, she will be fitted with a contraceptive device immediately after she gives birth by cesarean section.
Earlier this year, the woman’s case drew international outrage after a different British judge, Justice Nathalie Lieven, attempted to force the woman to abort her unborn baby. An appeals court later overturned her ruling.
The woman and her family are Catholic. They argued against the forced abortion and forced contraception for their daughter.
Here’s more from the report:
The NHS trust at the hospital where the woman is being cared for argued that she should be given a contraceptive device while under anaesthesia immediately following the delivery of her child.
Fiona Paterson, the barrister representing the NHS trust, told the court it would not be in the woman’s interest again to conceive a child, and that she is vulnerable and could not be supervised constantly.
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But the woman’s mother, a social worker who assists her, and the barrister representing her said there was a plan to safeguard the woman and that such interference in her autonomy was unjustified.
Susanna Rickard, the woman’s barrister, said the chances of the woman being exposed to “further sexual activity” was “close to nil.”
It is not clear if they plan to appeal Justice MacDonald’s ruling.
Initially, doctors argued that an abortion was in the woman’s best interests — even though social workers and her family disagreed. Her legal team argued there is no evidence to show that aborting her baby is beneficial for her. The woman’s mother even offered to care for the grandchild, but a judge ruled otherwise.
In June, Justice Lieven ruled in favor of the forced abortion when the woman was about 22-weeks pregnant. Lieven argued that aborting her unborn baby would be less traumatic for the woman than losing custody to foster care or adoption, according to CNA. The judge also claimed the child would not be a “real baby” until after birth.
Lieven is an abortion activist who once worked as a lawyer for the largest abortion chain in the UK, the British Pregnancy Advisory Services (BPAS).
Her ruling was overturned, but the woman’s case is a reminder that forced abortions and sterilizations are not just a thing of the past. Women and unborn babies in first-world countries still are being subjected to these horrors – sometimes at the hands of their own government.
