A Florida court rejected parents’ right to be involved in their underage daughter’s abortion decision last month, allowing the teen to abort her unborn baby without their knowledge or consent.
Though Florida requires parental consent for abortions for girls under 18, a district court granted the 17-year-old Tampa teen an exception, according to Fox News.
The teen, “Jane Doe,” admitted that she does not have any physical or mental health problems that would make her pregnancy more difficult, and she did not mention anything about her parents being abusive or neglectful, according to the ruling by the Second District Court of Appeals of Florida.
She just wants an elective abortion and believes her parents would encourage her to keep her unborn baby, according to the court ruling.
“[She] lives with her father, who does not believe in abortion except in cases of rape,” the ruling states. “She believes that both of her parents would urge her to keep the baby if they found out that she wanted an abortion.”
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The teen also believes that making an adoption plan for her baby “would hurt [her] more mentally than” having her baby aborted, according to the ruling.
A lower court judge initially denied the teen’s request, but she appealed and the appeals court granted her request in late January.
One of the three judges dissented, saying the majority discounted many of the lower court’s concerns with the girl’s emotional stability and ability to accept responsibility. The girl was “cavalier” and rude, interrupting the court and responding “curtly” to “serious questions,” according to the dissent.
But the majority granted her a judicial bypass anyway, saying the girl is mature enough to make her own decisions and her concern about not being financially stable enough to care for a baby is legitimate.
USA Today reports the girl told the court that her boyfriend and his mother support her decision to have an abortion, and they will drive her to the abortion facility and pay for the procedure.
Here’s more from News Channel 9:
A judge has to consider seven factors when considering giving a petitioner a judicial bypass, Florida law says. The factors include “overall intelligence; emotional development and stability; credibility and demeanor as a witness; ability to accept responsibility; ability to assess both the immediate and long-range consequences of the minor’s choices; and ability to understand and explain the medical risks of terminating her pregnancy and to apply that understanding to her decision.”
Rinky Parwani, the teen’s attorney, counter[ed] the claim the teen doesn’t meet or exceed these requirements. Parwani explain[ed] in the follow-up petition the teen works several jobs and, outside of basic necessities covered by her father, she mostly pays for the things she wants and needs.
Afterward, Parwani celebrated the ruling, telling WTVT News: “That is huge for these ladies that petition the court for this. They do have futures, they understand that having a child may limit those futures in different ways.”
Currently, 36 states require a parent to consent or be notified before their underage daughter has an abortion, and polls show strong public support for such laws.
Research shows that parental involvement laws help young girls and save unborn babies from abortions. They protect young victims of sexual abuse from being forced or coerced into an abortion by an abuser. The laws also help protect vulnerable teens from making a hasty, uninformed decision to abort their unborn babies – something they may later regret.
Judicial bypass exception within these laws is supposed to be for girls who come from abusive homes, but abortion activists often guide girls on how to take advantage of the exception, setting them up with lawyers and presenting their cases before activist judges who are likely to approve the request.
In 2013, the National Right to Life Committee found that, in one state during a period of 4 1/2 years, there were 3,573 judicial petitions to bypass parents and only nine were denied.
NRLC explained at the time:
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.
