ALABAMA HIGH COURT UPHOLDS JUDGE WHO DENIED ABORTION TO TEEN.(Brief Article)

The Alabama Supreme Court has upheld the July 20 decision of a lower court judge who had ruled that "a pregnant teenager and her godmother answered questions so perfunctorily and showed so little emotion that he refused to allow her to get an abortion without parental consent," according to the Associated Press (AP).

Under requirements handed down by the United States Supreme Court, protective laws which establish that parents be notified when a minor daughter is contemplating an abortion must have a "judicial bypass." Under this procedure, the minor goes to a court to establish either that the abortion is in her "best interest" or that she is "mature" enough to make the decision on her own.

Ordinarily, such requests are rubber stamped. Not so in this case. According to the AP, the trial judge who denied the waiver for the 17-year-old girl wrote that the "`testimony of the minor and her godmother appeared to be rehearsed and that neither of the two individuals showed any emotion concerning the very serious request that they were making in this proceeding.... This court did not believe the minor or her godmother,' who is identified as a woman with children."

Chief Justice Roy Moore and Justices Harold See, Champ Lyons, Jean Brown, and Lyn Stuart agreed. The majority said the lower court's conclusions, "although subjective, were based on its having personally viewed the witnesses as they testified and cannot be questioned on appeal, where we have before us only a cold, printed record."

According to press accounts, the girl said that she and the child's father, who was preparing for college, agreed they were not "ready for a child, financially or otherwise." But why not adoption?