13-Year-Old Girl in UK Forced by Judge to Have an Abortion

According to this article in the Huffington Post, a 13-year-old girl in the UK was ordered by a judge to have an abortion, which has since been carried out. The girl is mentally disabled and said to have the mental capacity of a 7-year-old. In spite of her very clear indications that she did not want an abortion and the testimony of a professional psychiatrist that an abortion would be emotionally damaging for her and that she would see it as an assault, the judge ruled that an abortion was in her best interest. In his words: "Leaving to one side her own wishes and feelings, the preponderance of all the evidence is clear that it would be in her best interests to have a termination."

So now it's not even about a woman's choice, I guess. Now that we have defined the unborn to be non-persons and made it legally and socially acceptable to kill them at will, our society now sees killing an unborn child as health care for the mother and of no more significance than of pulling a tooth or having an appendix removed. Is it any wonder, then, that a judge would rule that forcing a young teen to have an abortion against her will is in her best interest? Is it any wonder that her conscience, in not wanting to kill her child, was ignored?

If the unborn are not persons, then not only should we ignore the rights of the unborn child, but we should also ignore any ideas people might have about the humanity of the unborn. A young woman's conscience (i.e. "wishes and feelings") being opposed to abortion must be just superstition and shouldn't be taken into account in deciding what is best for her. That is the logic we are seeing here.

This isn't the first such case either. For example, there have been similar cases of mentally disabled women forced or nearly forced to have abortions by judges in January of 2012 in Massachusetts, November of 2012 in Nevada, and January of 2013 in London.

In a culture where dehumanizing the unborn is so common, it is no surprise to see a shift toward forced abortion as people see less and less reason to value and protect life. All this talk of "choice" contributes to the idea that abortion is just an ordinary choice. So if the courts can decide what is best for a child or disabled person in other matters, why not decide for them whether they should have an abortion? Why not "choose" abortion for those deemed incapable of choice for themselves? If abortion is just a choice, that's what logically follows, and we can expect to see a lot more women forced to abort in the future.