"Baby Girl S" Born in Florida.(child carried to term by disabled women who was victim of rape)

When "Baby Girl S" was delivered August 30, the birth of the six-pound, seven-ounce child represented a happy ending to a story that began in sheer ugliness. The baby's severely mentally disabled mother, referred to in documents as "J.D.S.," tragically had been raped in an Orlando, Florida, group home where she lived.

Mother and child were at the center of a fierce controversy that extended for months over such issues as who would be appointed the mother's legal guardian, what would happen to the unborn child, and whether a separate guardian should have been appointed for the baby, as reguested by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Evidently, no one explicitly counseled aborting the baby, although there were some ominous rumbles. For example, back in May, Howard Simon, the ACLU's Florida executive director, lobbed verbal jabs at Gov. Bush, charging that the governor's request for a separate guardian for the baby was a "stalling tactic" to prevent any possibility of an abortion, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

At the time, Simon told the Associated Press (AP) he was not aware of anyone as yet suggesting that an abortion should occur in this case. The AP paraphrased Simon as saying, "What should happen is that a guardian appointed for the expectant mother should quickly evaluate what's best for her. He doesn't assume that would mean an abortion, but said abortion should be among the possibilities."

For his part, Gov. Bush insisted his act was not a political statement but a "moral decision" on behalf of a mother unable to make a decision for herself and her unborn child. "This is simply an expression of compassion for a tragic case where a woman was raped and cannot provide support or any decision for this child," Bush said, according to the Times.

The baby was born uneventfully at 10 a.m. August 30 during a scheduled Caesarean section at an unnamed Orlando-area hospital. "She's pretty. She's got lots of hair. It's curly," Patti Jarrell (the mother's court-appointed legal guardian) told the Orlando Sentinel. Jarrell had waited several hours on the day of the baby's birth, but only saw a photo of the new baby. She said, "I'm still a little upset I didn't get to see the baby."

J.D.S.'s pregnancy was discovered in April. The real controversy began when police wanted to use amniocentesis to obtain a DNA sample from the baby before her birth.