Court Rules Teen Not Mature Enough to Abort, Mature Enough to Be Mom
LatestLast Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court denied a 16-year-old foster child’s request to get an abortion without parental consent. The teen, identified only as Anonymous 5, was deemed not mature enough to make the decision herself. So then she’s mature enough to raise a child? Okay, sure. Whatever you say, Nebraska.
The teenager, identified in the court ruling as Anonymous 5, showed evidence of mature reasoning at a confidential hearing. She worried that she didn’t have the financial resources to support a child or to be “the right mom that I would like to be right now.” Yet district judge Peter C. Bataillon, whom the Raw Story reports once served on the committee for an Omaha anti-abortion group, disagreed, and the Supreme Court upheld his ruling in a split vote of 5-2.
Just to back up a second — Bataillon asked the teen whether she knew that “When you have the abortion, it’s going to kill the child inside of you,” before issuing his surely impartial ruling.
The high court ruling was the first involving Nebraska’s new parental consent law, which was passed last year and requires girls 17 and under to obtain written, notarized consent of a parent or guardian for an abortion.