Mother Jones: “Nebraska Court Decides 16-Year-Old Is Too Immature for an Abortion, But Motherhood’s Okay”
Slate: “Nebraska Court Rules Teen Too Immature for an Abortion, Fine to Raise a Kid”
Jezebel: “Court Rules Teen Not Mature Enough to Abort, Mature Enough to Be Mom”
Maddow Blog: “Too immature for an abortion, but not for motherhood”
The Stir: “Teen Deemed Too ‘Immature’ for Abortion — But Not to Have a Baby!”
Liberal America: “In Nebraska 16 Is Too Young For Abortion, But Old Enough To Parent”
Boy, independent thought really thrives in the blogosphere’s pro-abortion neighborhoods, doesn’t it?
The story in question concerns an abused, pregnant teen seeking an abortion because she wasn’t in a position to “be the right mom that I would like to be right now,” and unwilling to tell her foster parents “because of their strong religious beliefs,” which she feared would make them “resent her and then tell her biological siblings that she was a ‘bad person.’”
After District Judge Peter Bataillon denied her request for a judicial bypass of Nebraska’s parental consent requirement, she appealed her case:
The state Supreme Court judges released their opinion last week, again concluding that because the 16-year-old was still financially dependent on her foster parents, had not mentioned any work experience and had never lived on her own, she was not mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion.
To get a consent waiver from the court, the young woman had to prove abuse by her actual parents, but since they no longer had any parental rights over her when she asked the court for the waiver, the court wouldn’t grant it.
The Supreme Court upheld Bataillon’s conclusions that she wasn’t mature enough and that her foster family’s religiosity wasn’t sufficient evidence that they wouldn’t act in her best interests. They also rejected the “absurd” argument that “nothing in the [judicial bypass provision for child abuse] makes reference to when the abuse, or child abuse or neglect must have taken place, nor does the statute state that the abuse must be related to a woman’s pregnancy”:
“[P]etitioner’s interpretation of the statutory language would lead to an absurd result,” the judges wrote in their decision. “For example, imagine a child who was abused by her father as a newborn, whose mother divorced the father and raised the child in a safe and loving home, and who 16 years later becomes pregnant and desires an abortion without her mother’s consent. Under petitioner’s interpretation, the court would automatically have to issue an order authorizing the abortion without the consent of the pregnant woman’s mother based solely on abuse by a different parent a decade and a half earlier.”
But what pro-aborts seem most incensed by is Bataillon (apparently a former committee member of Metro Right to Life) asking her whether she knew an abortion was “going to kill the child inside you,” to which she answered yes. Her lawyer, Catherine Mahern, called the question “disturbing” and wondered, “who talks to a distressed 16-year-old girl like that?” The aforementioned bloggers took the question as obvious evidence of the judge’s bias.
Except the question is, y’know, accurate. And obviously, highly germane to the subject at hand. Per standard procedure, the dutiful pro-abort is to pretend there’s only one person involved in abortion, papering over the victim’s omission with liberal amounts of indignation.
And as the litany of curiously-similar headlines demonstrates, it also helps to fabricate a counter-outrage to which you can divert people’s attention. In this case, the implication is that pro-lifers are callously pushing a blatant double standard. But neither the judges involved nor pro-life observers said anything about forcing this girl to raise the baby. And Nebraska’s Safe Haven Law protects a mother’s right to leave her baby with a hospital, which will then set him or her up with state authorities.
Notably, one of Jezebel’s own pro-abortion commenters dared to point out that detail:
This is bad, yes, but being denied an abortion does not = becoming a mom. I guess I can sort of get how the assumption found its way into a linkbait-y headline, but adoption wasn’t mentioned once in this article.
Despite repeatedly stressing that she was on their side about the case’s merits, this is a sampling of the thoughtful, levelheaded reactions Fjordan got for her flagrant act of objectivity:
Goldenrae: Right, I mean abortion and delivering an unwanted pregnancy is totes not traumatic either.
Sondeguerra: Women are not aquariums. You are advocated forced pregnancy and forced, or at least coerced, adoption. You should be ashamed of yourself.
MulderLovesMe: Making a child carry a pregnancy to term, endangering her life and physical and mental health, to have a baby she does not want simply to add another child to the adoption pool of homeless children? Making her have and give up a baby? She’s a foster child with abusive parents for god’s sake! I am so sick of people trying to tell women what they must do with their bodies and lives. GAH!!!!
BVK: Bullshit. Placing a child for adoption does not rid you of being a parent. When you give birth to a child, you are a parent to that person for ever. I wish people would stop believing that adoption just wipes away any trace of the child’s and birth parent’s relationship prior to the adoption. An adopted child does not just “move on with their life” once they are adopted. Well over 90% of the adoptees I know want information about their birth parents.
But apparently you never were “a parent to that person for ever” if you kill him or her. Apparently killing that very same child perfectly “wipes away any trace of” your relationship with him or her.
The inescapable conclusion is that wanting abortion-related stories to be depicted accurately is but the latest tool in the patriarchy’s oppression of the fairer sex. It’s a good thing we have such intrepid Feminazi soldiers standing vigilant to protect the cause from any hint of critical thinking.
