It’s not about prosecuting her, it’s about her health and that of the fetus that the state claims to care about.
And that’s the difference in our views. Not much point to any other discussion – it’s all sideshow; this is the disagreement.
Indeed, they are. I wouldn’t make the decision this girl’s guardian did, it doesn’t match my morals. But there’s a lot of ground to cover before I can say, the state should override the guardian’s decision.
The pregnancy is a fait accompli. You can’t blame the state for her being pregnant in the first place.
~Max
So, then can the guardian decide whether she’s allowed to keep the baby or must give it up for adoption? Because, honestly, that decision requires the most maturity.
Maybe you should move to Iran or something. Or at least someplace that’s a theocracy.
In this case, the state is the guardian.
So is cancer, but I would blame anyone who prevented its treatment.
I dunno. We could look at the state’s stance on sex education and find it lacking.
There seems to be a misunderstanding here. This girl has an appointed guardian. The guardian is not the state.
One thing I don’t understand about this case is that the girl, on her petition, alleged that her guardian is fine with her having an abortion. If she could get a written consent from the guardian she wouldn’t need to prove her maturity to a court in the first place, and on this basis the dissenting judge would have remanded the case to the trial court.
~Max
I don’t blame the state for getting her pregnant. I blame it for forcing her to finish making the baby.
I thought she alleged that her aunt, or whatever, was fine with it. Her aunt isn’t her guardian, she’s a ward of the State.
Who appointed the guardian?
There seem to be a few things you don’t understand, but yes, this is one of them. She lives with a relative, that relative says she is fine with her having an abortion. She also has a state appointed guardian, that person says she cannot.
My defense of the courts does not go past “come back in a couple weeks and tell us if you still want the abortion”. If it weren’t for the history of trauma and the recent death of a friend being described as retraumatizing, I wouldn’t defend even that much.
~Max
Which religion?
Page 3,
Second, the minor states that her “guardian is fine with what [she] wants to do,” which would be a sufficient basis for a waiver of notice if other statutory requisites are met. the minor states that her “guardian is fine with what [she] wants to do,” which would be a sufficient basis for a waiver of notice if other statutory requisites are met.
Page 5,
A limited statutory remand is particularly appropriate given that the petition essentially says the minor’s guardian agrees to the termination of pregnancy, which would be a legally sufficient basis for a waiver—an issue raised indirectly in the petition but not addressed in the trial judge’s order. The minor wrote that her guardian “was fine” with the minor’s decision. This statement was written in the section of the form petition related to whether it was in the “best interest of the minor” for a parent/guardian to not be notified, which was out of place on the form but not a basis to disregard the apparent possibility of guardian consent. If the minor’s guardian consents to the minor’s termination of her pregnancy, all that is required is a written waiver from the guardian. § 390.01114(4)(b)2., Fla. limited statutory remand is particularly appropriate given that the petition essentially says the minor’s guardian agrees to the termination of pregnancy, which would be a legally sufficient basis for a waiver—an issue raised indirectly in the petition but not addressed in the trial judge’s order. The minor wrote that her guardian “was fine” with the minor’s decision. This statement was written in the section of the form petition related to whether it was in the “best interest of the minor” for a parent/guardian to not be notified, which was out of place on the form but not a basis to disregard the apparent possibility of guardian consent. If the minor’s guardian consents to the minor’s termination of her pregnancy, all that is required is a written waiver from the guardian. § 390.01114(4)(b)2., Fla. Stat. Such a written waiver would be self-executing, meaning that the minor need not invoke the judicial bypass procedure at all.
~Max
Right, and then the court says, “Oh, sorry, you can’t have an abortion because it’s past the deadline. And you can’t leave the state to get one elsewhere because we won’t let you.”
The Yahoo! news reporting is low quality, but it does say the case comes from a request to waive the parental consent requirement. I do give props to them for linking to the actual decision in the third sentence.
A Florida appeals court will force a parentless 16-year-old girl to give birth because the teen is not “sufficiently mature” to decide for herself whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. A circuit court judge previously denied the girl’s request to waive a state law requiring minors get parental consent for an abortion. On Monday, a three-judge panel upheld the decision.
If you follow that up you will find that this was in fact a petition by the girl to bypass getting consent from her guardian. The state laws are cited there, Fla. stat. 390.01114. Or you can read the section I just quoted in #73.
You are still looking at this as if the girl is the one who decides whether she gives birth. As if this is some sort of glaring contradiction - it isn’t. She is already pregnant, that is a given. The decision to have an abortion is the same decision as the one to give birth. If you have an abortion, you don’t give birth. If you birth the child, you don’t have the abortion. You can’t separate the two.
Maybe you aren’t making the connection, but if the state won’t let the girl have an abortion without her guardian’s consent… that means the guardian is the one deciding whether the girl gives birth. (until the 15 week mark.) So when you say if she isn’t mature enough to decide on abortion, she isn’t mature enough to decide on birth… that doesn’t contradict what I’m saying.
~Max
Being a minor isn’t like being drunk. You’re drawing the wrong conclusions from my analogy.
An adult who is drunk is like a minor who is emotionally unstable, in that both are in no condition to make medical decisions. The adult drinks because of the recent death of a friend. The minor may be emotionally unstable due to the recent death of a friend - or so I speculate.
~Max
I think we already had a debate on religion and public policy a couple years ago, but if you’re interested I could do a spin-off thread. Or you could, preferably. I don’t support theocracy but I suspect we have different working definitions of the term.
~Max
The weird thing is, once you have a kid of your own, you are presumed to be mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion. It’s there in the statute, if you’re a pregnant teenager and you show the court a birth certificate for a previous kid, you don’t need consent from your parent/guardian and you don’t need to prove how mature you are. Kinda goes with what filmore was saying, now you have more experience, and you know what you’re getting into (or out of). Also Florida’s public policy of preventing repeat teen pregnancies and ensuing welfare dependency.
I wish I could answer your question directly. I don’t know how that works, whether the state has to involve child protection services or who gets to claim the baby on their taxes.
ETA: Fla. stat. 744.301, not sure if other provisions or a court ruling would normally override this default.
The mother of a child born out of wedlock is the natural guardian of the child and is entitled to primary residential care and custody of the child unless the court enters an order stating otherwise.
~Max
The state (courts) would have. I believe the process for orphans is to look for next of kin, relatives, and finally attorneys or foster parents. Since she lives with a relative the guardian wouldn’t be a foster parent. One might assume the guardian is a next of kin or relative; however, it’s possible the relative she lives with is a convicted felon or is otherwise not qualified to serve as a guardian, and thus the guardian is an attorney. But the bottom line is that it is not the state, and the state doesn’t tell appointed guardians to withhold consent for abortions.
~Max
It’s important to me that this wasn’t a final decision. As I’ll explain below I think there was time to go back to court, and as I explained in previous posts I believe the trial judge was essentially saying, come back in a week or so and ask again. Even if it were a final decision, which it wasn’t, I think the guardian should have most of the blame, since the state is essentially denying the girl’s petition to bypass parental/guardian consent requirements.
From what I can tell she had a week or two to to go back. She was ten weeks pregnant when the first petition was filed. The court has three business days after the petition is filed. The appeals court then has seven days to hear the appeal. So I’m thinking she was eleven to twelve weeks pregnant when the appeal court handed down its ruling. The idea is to file another petition at a later time, which is another three days before the judge rules.
The deadline is 15 weeks and 6 days, but there’s a 24 hour waiting period between consultation and the actual abortion procedure. You also have to account for availability and the fact that she is too advanced for medication abortion. So there’s time, not a lot, but there should have been time.
~Max