Not mature enough
Former Hillsborough county circuit judge Jared Smith denied a 17-year-old girl access to an abortion in January, citing her low school grades as justification for his ruling that she lacked the maturity to make the decision for herself.
So she’s not mature enough to decide to have an abortion but she is mature enough to push out a baby??? And then raise it?
It’s a massive catch-22, isn’t it. You’re too young and clueless to decide not to have a baby, so you have to have a baby you don’t want to have, which will obviously go very well for the baby and the mother and anyone who may be around to pick up the pieces.
There is adoption of course but surely judges aren’t ruling on abortion cases while assuming the unwilling girls and women condemned to have babies they don’t want will all have the babies adopted? Surely?
They probably are, which reduces the female people they condemn to unwanted childbirth to machines for the production of infants for other people.
And having s baby surely won’t have a negative impact on her grades.
Never mind that there are other reasons for low grades besides lack of maturity.
It often seems to me the maturity argument should go in the other direction: abortion is required unless the pregnant girl can be shown to be mature enough to birth and raise a child. But for the crowd that views childbirth as punishment for having irresponsible sex, such an argument wouldn’t fly. I wouldn’t support it, either, but it would be interesting to hear the pro-forced-birth arguments against it.
I saw a tweet about this from one of the ‘very online’ lawyers some months back. A few minutes ago I saw on Post that the Judge was reversed on appeal and lost his re-election bid. He’s just been appointed to the Florida Court of Appeals by the GOP’s stand in arsehole (De Santis)
Faaaaaaantastic.