Florida Pretty Sure Teenage Girl Not Grown-Up Enough For Abortion, And Other Tales From Hell
What a shithole country this is.
Here's another one of those stories that we're going to hear about more and more in today's post- Roe landscape. We say "hear about" because this isn't specifically happening because Samuel Alito jumped into everybody's underpants and started yelling his stupid Roman Catholic Jesus rules at all the vaginas. Our country was already full of shitty abortion laws before Alito did that. But we're going to hear more about things like this now because there's more of a spotlight on it now.
An appeals court in Florida has upheld a lower court's decision that a 16-year-old girl who needs an abortion can't get an abortion because she's just not grown-up enough to make that decision. She doesn't have parents. She doesn't want to be a parent. She's trying to get her GED. But she's not mature enough to say hey, I don't want this fetus in me, according to these judges. Florida is pretty sure she'll be cool when they force her to birth a child, though.
No, that's really what it says in the order, we are not making this up:
“Florida appeals court affirms an order prohibiting a parentless 16-year-old from terminating her pregnancy on the grounds that she has not proved she is mature enough to get an abortion. So the state will force her to have a child instead. https: //t.co/1UqnPUErG0”
— Mark Joseph Stern (@Mark Joseph Stern) 1660658530
Neat.
This is Florida's version of judicial bypass, which is where states require parents to give their permission for their children to have abortions, but sort of provides a way around that if necessary, if the child is able to convince a judge to let them have an abortion, please please pretty please with cream and sugar on top. As Politico explains, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican duh, signed the state's parental consent law in 2020.
Obviously, begging a judge you've never met for an abortion you need is very very very not ideal. To see how not ideal it is, read the whole Politico, which features a bunch of judges arguing with each other in legalese over whether this girl is simply too immature to choose abortion, or if her judgment was clouded because she's upset her friend just died. Really.
Anyway, no abortions for you, Florida girl!
Heading over to Louisiana, we find a story that's sad and gruesome and really is going to happen more and more now that Roe is gone. A woman in Baton Rouge who's currently about 13 weeks pregnant — well below the threshold established in Roe, which says states can restrict abortions after the point a fetus can live outside the womb — says her doctors have told her that her very wanted pregnancy has acrania, which is where the skull doesn't develop. If she carried this pregnancy to term, a baby would be born and would live maybe minutes, maybe a few hours.
But she can't have an abortion because Louisiana says this doesn't count as "life of the mother" and the Louisiana Department of Health doesn't have "acrania" on its list, so fuck youuuuuuuu , pregnant person in a godawful situation you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
And because we live under the thumb of the white supremacist fascist theocracy of the illegitimate partisan hack Supreme court, this is a decision for the state government in Louisiana, and not for the pregnant woman or her doctor.
“It was an abnormal ultrasound, and they noticed the top of the baby’s head was missing and the skull was missing, the top of the skull was missing,” [Nancy] Davis explained. [...]
Unsure about what to do, Davis is faced with a tough decision. Either carry the baby to term, or cross state lines to get an abortion.
“Florida is the closest...so ideally Florida. But then the next closest place would be North Carolina or something,” Davis added.
Thank goodness she's not a teenager, a Florida judge might decide she's not mature enough to confront this horrible situation.
Of course, she knows she's gotta figure it out fast, because other states have 15-week bans. Otherwise, the alternative:
“It’s hard knowing that ... you know I’m carrying it to bury it ... you know what I’m saying,” asked [Davis.]
What an absolute garbage country we live in, at least until we figure out a way to prevent Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett from shoving the boners of white Christian nationalist patriarchy in everybody's faces and ruining their lives in the process.
Of course, Barrett is probably fine with this, as based on her earlier arguments we imagine she's confident both these women can just leave their babies at the fire station and everything will be cool.
Stay tuned for next week, when there will be a million more stories like this, and white conservative Christians are to blame.
[ WAFB Baton Rouge ]
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