This Week’s Cruelty to Women

Tudor Dixon (Just love that name) GOP candidate for Governor of Michigan.  She thinks if a 14-year-old girl is raped and pregnant, having the baby might “help the healing.”

Well it’s been another interesting week for women as the nation marches toward an American version of theocratic fascism.  Once we reach Gilead we will be no diferent than the Taliban.  “Christian” perhaps; but no different.

This week the Republican nominee for governor in Michigan spoke of the “bond” between a mother and child when asked if an underage rape victim should be able to have an abortion.

Tudor Dixon, who won the GOP primary this month following the endorsement of ex-President Donald Trump, told Fox 2 Detroit that she was “pro-life with exceptions for life of the mother” when questioned about how her stance on terminations was being presented.

When asked about whether she would support terminating the pregnancy of a 14-year-old rape victim, Dixon replied that she had spoken to people who were the children of rape victims and that “the bond that those two people made and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby, it’s something that we don’t think about.”

And it’s something you don’t want the rape victim to think about either or have any choice in the matter.  You just want her to have the baby.   It “promotes healing.”

It should happen to your daughter.

Notwithstanding the position of the Republican nominee, abortion remains legal for the time being in Michigan.

This week, a judge blocked county prosecutors from enforcing a 1931 law banning abortion which did not exclude cases of rape or incest and would punish anyone carrying out the procedure.

Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Jacob James Cunningham granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law until a final ruling is determined, arguing that the century-old legislation “simply does not pass constitutional muster.”

Meanwhile here in Florida, this week a judge ruled that a  lawyerless, orphaned 16 year old girl was not “mature enough” to have an abortion.  Seems that just about anyone can be a judge these days.  One need only look at the Supremes.

A 16-year-old orphan identified only as “Jane Doe 22-B” became pregnant, and in the 10th week of her pregnancy sought to get an abortion this month in North Florida.

The state law requires parental consent for minors to get abortions. Without parental consent, minors who become pregnant must petition a state circuit court judge to issue a “judicial bypass” to permit the abortion.

In 2020, Republican state lawmakers championed and passed the Parental Notice of Abortion Act, which established third-degree felony charges against any doctor who performs an abortion on a minor who lacked either the parental consent or the judicial bypass.

In this case, the girl’s parents were both dead, she was living with a relative and had been assigned a guardian ad litem by the state. These are adults who are assigned to represent “the best interest of the child” in cases of child abandonment, neglect, or abuse.

The girl submitted a hand-written two-page application with the Escambia County Circuit Court that sought an abortion through a judicial bypass.

The girl failed to check a box on the form that would have provided her, for free, an attorney to represent her in this legal matter.

An appellate judge later noted that due to this “inexplicable” failure to proceed without free legal representation, the girl needlessly put herself through a judicial wringer.

Her application for a judicial bypass was unnecessary because, as the girl indicated in her application, her guardian “was fine” with her decision to get an abortion.

“If the minor’s guardian consents to the minor’s termination of her pregnancy, all that is required is a written waiver from the guardian,” First District Court of Appeal Judge Scott Makar wrote. “Such a written waiver would be self-executing, meaning that the minor need not invoke the judicial bypass procedure at all.”

You might think that somebody in the judicial system may have stepped in to help this lawyer-less teenage orphan to fix what is essentially a paperwork matter.  Fu_k no.

Instead, she was put through a hearing designed for teenagers who wanted abortions against the expressed wishes of their parents.

Without the legal help she was entitled to receive, the girl was subjected to the judicial bypass process with Escambia County Circuit Judge Jennifer Frydrychowicz in a non-adversarial hearing held in the judge’s chambers.

The girl was present with her case worker and her guardian ad litem child advocate manager.  The judge, who was first appointed to the bench by former Gov. Rick Scott and elevated to the circuit court by Gov. Ron DeSantis two years ago, wrote after the hearing that the girl was “credible” and “open” during the hearing, and that at times she appeared to be “stable and mature enough to make this decision.”

Nevertheless, the judge found that the girl’s “evaluation of the benefits and consequences of her decision is wanting.” And that the girl had been traumatized by the death of a friend shortly before her decision to seek an abortion, and that may be playing into her decision. Maybe she would later change her mind over time, the judge reasoned.

A subsequent review of the trial-court judge’s ruling by a three-judge panel in the First District Court of Appeal found that there was no need to overturn the trial court’s decision to deny the girl an abortion or to send the issue back to the trial court for a future rehearing.

The appellate court ruled that the girl “had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.”

Amazing. Let this sink in. This is an orphaned teenager being denied an abortion because she doesn’t have her dead parents’ written permission.

And for those of you keeping score at home, consider this:

If the state, based on the inherent biases of a total of four judges, finds a traumatized, pregnant, orphaned underage teenager to be too immature to make important decisions about herself and too financially and emotionally unstable to even take care of her own needs, then she should be forced into non-consensual motherhood rather than an otherwise-legal abortion.

That’s where we are in the “free state of Florida.”

Meanwhile, a pregnant Louisiana woman will be forced to travel to another state to abort her fetus, which is missing part of its skull and would die soon after birth, according to the woman’s doctor.

Because the fetus’ condition — acrania — is not specifically named in the state law as an exception to Louisiana’s abortion ban, Nancy Davis, 36, will travel several states away where she can obtain an abortion.

“There’s nothing I wanted more than this child,” she told The New York Times.

But she also explained to CBS affiliate WAFB in Baton Rouge that it was excruciating to think that she was “carrying it to bury it.”  The fetus was diagnosed after an ultrasound at just 10 weeks of pregnancy, and Davis’ doctor recommend she get an abortion but the hospital where Davis sought the procedure refused to terminate the pregnancy.

Too chicken-shit they might be sued by some local fanatic.

“Without commenting on Davis’ case, because of medical privacy laws, a hospital spokesperson told CNN that unviable pregnancies are difficult to navigate within Louisiana’s confusing, complex abortion ban.”

“Even if a specific diagnosis falls under medical exceptions provided by [the Louisiana Department of Health, the laws addressing treatment methods are much more complex and seemingly contradictory,” said Caroline Isemann, spokesperson for Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge.

That’s where we are ladies.  Carry that fetus without a skull to term, then bury it or fly out of Louisiana to terminate your unviable pregnancy.  After all, it’s God’s will.

Time to confine these fable believing lunatics back in their churches.

,

 

 

Advertisement