13-Year-Old Girl Being Turned Into A Baby Pod Against Her Will
A 13-year-old foster child in Florida got pregnant, and reportedly wants an abortion, writes Kathleen Chapman in the Palm Beach Post, but the head of the state Department of Children and Families is trying to put the right to choose in a judge's hands:
DCF Secretary Lucy Hadi reviewed the case and felt she could not allow the girl to end the pregnancy before notifying a juvenile court judge, Marilyn Munoz, spokeswoman for the agency in Palm Beach County, said Friday."The judge had no knowledge of the young girl's condition, so Secretary Hadi requested that we... inform the judge and ask for an injunction to request time for him to review the case," Munoz said.
Many legal experts believe that the case of the foster child identified as L.G. may be the first of its kind in Florida. At issue is whether the state agency or the court has the right to consider whether the abortion is in her best interest — or whether the girl's constitutional right to choose bans both from getting involved.
A Florida law on the books for years says the state agency cannot consent to an abortion in any case.
But attorneys who work with foster children say DCF has rarely used that law to block an abortion sought by a child in foster care. Hadi's decision goes against state Supreme Court rulings that girls do not need parents' permission to get an abortion, some said.
Attorney Carolyn Salisbury, who represents children in foster care through the University of Miami's Children and Youth Law Clinic, said girls have been having abortions for decades without interference.
Normally, state caseworkers aren't involved, Salisbury said. A foster parent, attorney or friend drives the girl to the appointment. A private organization in Miami-Dade County donates money for the abortions so the state doesn't have to pay. In some cases, she said, the state never even knows.
"There's no reason for the state to know. It's a private decision," she said.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County agree, contending the state's action to block the abortion violates the girl's constitutional right to choose.
Her biological parents lost their rights for abusing and neglecting her, so the state serves as her legal custodian. But the state can't intervene because of L.G.'s right to privacy and individual choice, the organizations argue.
The first ten words of that article are where the action is. How the Hell did a 12-year-old get knocked up? It's tragic that instead of concentrating on a system that protects girls so badly, people want to think the big story here is the minutiae of abortion policy.
A guy named Abraham Maslow used to say: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." It's as if the rape of this girl, and the indisputably fucked up foster care in which she was exploited, and the incompentent family to which she was born simply don't matter. Those evils are like weather, so far as the ACLU concerned: Always present, but unresponsive to human influence. But if her right to abortion is challenged, then hey, we've got to step up... Because coddled white girls might want an abortion someday, too.
But you can't mock this crisis with "pod" rhetoric until you address those fundamentals. The Sunshine State makes a lousy parent, but it didn't put that girl on the Earth, and it didn't drop the seed into her womb. Policy is not the problem.
Crid at April 30, 2005 8:53 AM
Policy is indeed one of the problems; for example, the policy of promoting abstinence instead of tossing around birth control like candy. Policy that prohibits gay parents from adopting healthy children, thus decreasing (and with no valid statistical reason) the pool of available parents for children like this. If this girl had been living with the Loftons, the Florida family led by two gay men that Rosie O'Donnell apparently came out to help, I'd venture she'd be playing spin the bottle now, not spin the court system.
Amy Alkon at April 30, 2005 9:34 AM
WHY DO PEOPLE PERSIST IN COMPARING THE BEST OF GAY PARENTING TO THE WORST OF STRAIGHT?
You can try to make the world run according to your "valid statistical reasoning," but don't be surprised when they prefer other metrics.
Besides, where did that abstinence riff come from? Is there any evidence that this pregnant girl was herself born because her mother had no access to birth control? We've been drowning in birth control for descades. It hasn't helped. The truth is that fucked up women want children as badly as sane, loved ones do... They just tend to start earlier and do a shittier job of it.
Liberals like policies which manipulate things: Guns, cigarettes, birth control. Conservatives like to blame people, and the evil in human hearts.
Crid at April 30, 2005 10:16 AM
Because it's difficult to become a gay parent (can't just go, "whoops, the little strip is pink!") there's a tendency for all but the most committed to parenting to get weeded out.
I know many people prefer "other metrics"; probably because they are primitives living amongst us, whose irrational belief in god causes them to suck down homophobia as spoon fed to them by their business leaders, uh, religious leaders...who need to keep them in the business of primitive thinking to keep the church in the black.
Amy Alkon at April 30, 2005 10:31 AM
> ...there's a tendency for all but the most committed
> to parenting to get weeded out.
So you're saying we should maintain the difficulties? I hear ya. If all you want to do it tighten the standards for adoption, you'll find a lot of support.
There's more to loving parenthood than commitment, though that's obviously the place where so much heterosexual family life has eroded.
Crid at April 30, 2005 12:22 PM
Crid, while you're right that abortion policy isn't the whole problem, it's the only part that can be fixed now for that girl. Nothing now will fix the lousy parents, the lousy foster care/adoption system that she's been stuck in since 1998, etc. But they are now trying to force her (at age 13) to give birth - when a child who wasn't in a foster home could go get an abortion without parental consent.
Sure, there are other problems that ought to be fixed. But this is an immediate problem, specific to her, and she shouldn't be prevented from getting an abortion by the fact that she's already had some other lousy breaks.
JenL at April 30, 2005 2:53 PM
> the only part that can be fixed now for
> that girl.
When things get this rarefied and specific, the better solution is to handle them on a case-by-case basis. Jen, I've forgotten the details already, if Amy ever presented them. Bullshit family of origin, right? Raped (by definition) in early teens, right? Okey-fine, give the kid a D&C, and let all of us pay for it. But can anyone doubt that her immortal soul has been rendered into such hash that the same problem will again present itself in a couple dozen months?
Deep in the darkest days of the '80s I remember Ronald Reagan being presented with the case of some child who'd been crushed by the specifics of welfare policy (I think it was social security). And he turned to Deaver or whomever, and said "Can't we do soemthign for this little girl?" And Tip O'Neill screamed, "Mr. President, that't not the point!" That's how I feel about it, only backwards. By letting the heart only be touched by specifics, we miss the opportunity to help generally.
This little girl, tragic as her circumstance may be, is perhaps not the best possible target for compassion. I gotta believe that sincerely helpful hearts would do more to nip problems in the bud. One has to wonder why THIS case, at THIS time, is of such interest to people.
Our weekend is deeply underway now, and I won't further pester commenters on Amy's website until Monday.
Unless someone says something interesting.
Crid at April 30, 2005 4:35 PM
>But can anyone doubt that her immortal soul has
>been rendered into such hash that the same problem
>will again present itself in a couple dozen months?
It's not that I don't think we should be doing more for the rest that aren't in this pickle yet. But it's hard to see how you improve the situation for her or all of the rest of these kids who are warehoused in group homes because there aren't enough foster homes and apparently nobody wants to adopt the older kids. I certainly don't know how to "fix" that problem.
But I do think this kid's situation is going to be worse if she is forced to have this child than if she is allowed to have the abortion. Frankly, I'm not so much worried about her "immortal soul" as about her physical and mental health. And while I do worry about what will happen when she inevitably sees those "this is a fetus at x weeks" pictures, I still think she's better off not going through pregnancy, childbirth, and having the baby taken away from her.
JenL at May 1, 2005 5:46 AM
Crid wrote: "This little girl, tragic as her circumstance may be, is perhaps not the best target for compassion."
Crid, when I need "compassion", I know the person NOT to turn to is you. Now for the subject at hand, a 13 year old girl who is pregnant fits in the "girl who got raped" category & should, with the compassion of every adult in the US, also get an abortion as quickly as possible without having to go thru another hell in the meantime. All our bla bla bla about her condition is not taking anybody anywhere and what will happen to her in a couple of twelve months, if not before, is another matter. In fact, what will happen to her in life? - as from the looks of her beginning, her future looks bleak. And I have a question: where lies the responsibility of her guardian, the State of Florida, that holiest of holiest states from where so many of the horrifying news have been coming lately.
By the way, Crid, did you try to make a "jeu de mots" when you wrote "I gotta believe that sincerely helpful hearts would do more to nip problems in the bud." ? Because, in this case, this is exactly what helpful hearts are trying to do *nip HER problem in the bud*. The image is perfect.
Frania W.
Frania W. at May 1, 2005 9:23 PM
> did you try to make a "jeu de mots"...
Dunno. What's it mean?
Per Drudge, the kid gets an abortion. So everything's OK, right? I hear you calling "Next..!"
Can we talk about the runaway bride now? I think legally punitive responses are unnecessary. Have you seen any good video of Hugh Grant since about 1996? Having people chuckle and snort every time you walk into a room is a terrible punishment, and ages you rapidly.
Also, some guy in Amy's France got a mondo refund on expenditures for his teenage daughter when it was shown the child was not his. As he had, y'know, thought.
Always on the lookout for another freak-of-the-week!
Yours in Better Blog Commentary,
C.
Crid at May 3, 2005 3:34 PM
Crid, a "jeu de mots" is a "pun". I believe that by now, the 13-year old problem has been nipped... in the womb.
Frania W.
Frania W. at May 3, 2005 10:08 PM
Logic wins! Baby as a baby pod will be able to remove the unwanted fetus.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/05/03/abortion.dispute.ap/index.html
alex the sea turtle at May 4, 2005 10:24 AM
Thanks so much!
Amy Alkon at May 4, 2005 10:26 AM
Don't thank me thank the radical activist nut wing judges.
The dear Governor Jeb Bush says it's just tragic.
It's tragic but not as tragic as a 13 year old with no future bringing a baby into this world.
alex the sea turtle at May 4, 2005 10:36 AM
I know no one will see this post, except perhaps the blog owner, but I have to go ahead and make a comment anyhow. The idea of calling any girl/woman a "babypod," when she is a mothter of a pre-born child is absolutlely disgusting and degrading to women. She was thirteen, she got pregnant. The sad thing was that she was having sex at age 13. But nobody really wants to have educational programs that promote abstinence to help avoid that. NooOOOooo...She needs the right to contracept and kill.
Many statutory rape and incest cases get very well covered up by the availability of "dispensing with the evidence"? Abortion lets criminals off the hook in many, many incidences.
Countless young women who have had abortions try to kill themselves or become addicted to drinking, drugs and promiscuous sex and suffer serious psychology trauma once they come to grips with what abortion is. (speaking from personal knowledge of such a woman)
Now the child can have no future and his mother's looks like it could be pretty bleak as well if it follows the ones I know of. Abortion always leaves one dead and one wounded. Nobody's life is ever better off because of abortion; it hurts women and children and lets perps go free.
Suzanne at September 25, 2005 7:01 PM
Oh, please. I had an abortion and I'm not dead or wounded. I merely had an operation where they scraped out some two-week-old cells collecting in me...because I'm a self-involved person who shouldn't have kids.
What's idiotic is "abstinence" training instead of an education in responsible sexual behavior. Data shows that kids who get this training have sex -- unprotected -- about a year and a half later.
Suzanne, if you don't want cells scraped out of your body, go ahead and have a baby. While you're at it, what happens to all those kids after they're born? Where are the pro-lifers then in the lives of poor children. I shouldn't say "pro-life." Pro-primitivism is more like it.
And if I get pregnant again -- which I won't, thanks to obsessive concern and a supply of morning-after pills from France -- I would like to let you know that I will run to have those cells sucked out if me -- providing the religious nutters don't have their way. If they do, I'll have to fly to have it done. But I will have it done. Amy Alkon, cell killer!
Amy Alkon at September 25, 2005 7:30 PM
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