by Ryan Everson, Washington Examiner, June 21, 2019
A judge in the United Kingdom ruled that a mentally disabled pregnant mother must abort her baby because doctors have arbitrarily decided an abortion would be less traumatic for her than childbirth. At 22 weeks gestation, this baby can feel pain and may be viable outside the womb.
Ironically, Paterson accidentally acknowledged the humanity of the child by referring to the baby as “he or she.” But aside from this slip of the tongue, the life of the child clearly has no value in the judge’s calculus.
According to the Catholic News Agency, the pregnant mother has developmental disabilities and is “believed to have the mental capacity of a grade school-age child.” Consequently, U.K. judges and doctors have decided she should not have a child, and that an abortion would be less emotionally traumatic.
In her ruling for the Court of Protection on June 21, Justice Nathalie Lieven said, “I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn’t want it is an immense intrusion … [but] I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society’s views of termination.”
“Immense intrusion” is a remarkable understatement. If the government can force you to abort your child, is there any limit to its power?
The pregnant mother and her family do not want an abortion, but she is under the care of a division of the U.K.’s National Health Service — thus why this matter has gone to court and why they have not already gotten one. But because the pregnant mother is mentally challenged, Lieven said, “I think she would like to have a baby in the same way she would like to have a nice doll,” completely dismissing the mother’s desire for her baby.
Barrister John McKendrick, who is leading the legal team for the pregnant woman’s mother, says the court has “no proper evidence” that having an abortion will be beneficial to the pregnant mother. “Their evidence is premised on a narrow clinical view. The application must be dismissed,” McKendrick said. The pregnant woman’s mother has added that abortion strongly violates her family’s Catholic values and that she would raise her grandchild herself.
The leader of the opposing legal team, Fiona Paterson, has unbelievably argued that forcing this woman to have an abortion is an act of benevolence by the government.
“A termination is in her best interests,” said Paterson, who apparently thinks she knows better than the pregnant mother and her mother. “In broad terms [they] believe that as a result of her learning disabilities … [she] is likely to find the loss of a pregnancy easier to recover from than separation from the baby if he or she is taken into care,” Paterson said.
Ironically, Paterson accidentally acknowledged the humanity of the child by referring to the baby as “he or she.” But aside from this slip of the tongue, the life of the child clearly has no value in the judge’s calculus.
The court has decided that when a mother (allegedly) cannot make an informed decision on her pregnancy, abortion must be the default option, even if that child can survive outside the womb. Like the Charlie Gard situation from 2017, this remarkably sad case demonstrates the evil of Britain’s socialized healthcare system. Ideologues may call this an act of progressivism, but any sane person will see it as barbarism.
Article first appeared at: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/uk-judge-forcing-mentally-disabled-mother-to-have-abortion-against-her-will