Last week, a judge in the UK determined that a woman who was 22 weeks pregnant should be given a forced abortion against her will<\/a>. Justice Nathalie Lieven cited the woman\u2019s lack of mental capacity and the potential trauma of taking a \u201creal baby\u201d away into foster or adoptive care after birth. The pregnant woman was promised a new doll after the abortion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The young woman in question reportedly has the mental capacity of an elementary-school child, but her mother had promised to take full responsibility for raising the child. The mother and a social worker involved both spoke adamantly against the abortion, which the National Health Service doctors responsible for the pregnant woman\u2019s care were recommending.<\/p>\n

In an expedited hearing a few days later, a higher court thankfully overturned the ruling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fact that the initial ruling was made at all is troubling \u2013 here is a judge who believes it could be justified that the state would have so much control over a woman as to go into her body and kill her child without her consent. It also shows how little value is placed on a pre-born child. It seems in this case the state did have some capacity as a medical decision maker for this woman. But abortion is not healthcare<\/a>. It would not improve this woman\u2019s health, and definitely not do anything for the health of her pre-born child. \u00a0This is a misuse of the government\u2019s responsibility to care for those who are unable to care for themselves.<\/p>\n

Add to this that it is also against the woman\u2019s expressed wishes. Both pro-life as well as pro-choice advocates who staunchly defend the \u201cmy body, my choice\u201d rhetoric must oppose this completely. It reeks of China\u2019s one-child policy, or horror stories from North Korea<\/a>, where forced abortions and sterilizations are a known occurrence. This is not the type of state power we expect or can allow to go unnoticed.<\/p>\n

Further information and context will hopefully be forthcoming when the reasons for overturning the decision are released in the near future.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, a judge in the UK determined that a woman who was 22 weeks pregnant should be given a forced abortion against her will. Justice Nathalie Lieven cited the woman\u2019s lack of mental capacity and the potential trauma of taking a \u201creal baby\u201d away into foster or adoptive care after birth. The pregnant woman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3014,"featured_media":3595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[281,284,277],"tags":[79,845,844,200,547],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3014"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3653"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3658,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions\/3658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}