A disturbing story comes out of Philadelphia this morning that would make it seem like the Department of Human Services, a local government agency, pressured a 16-year-old to have a late-term abortion.
The teenager was in a foster home and her birth mother refused to provide consent for the abortion so DHS obtained a judge’s order to get the abortion anyways.
The teen’s social worker, Marisol Rivera, initially refused to accompany the girl to the abortion clinic and was subsequently fired (she later went with the girl for the 2nd day of the late-term abortion where the doctor would deliver the baby, who was already dead):
“They hired me to work in child protection, not to kill children,” Rivera told the Daily News.
This would be a prime case of conscience rights, which President Obama wants to rescind. A good video by Christian doctors talking about what would happen when medical professionals, and others, aren’t able to work according to their consciences is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7MbRMQpFhw.
Back to the story.
The case is confusing because it seems that the foster mother, whose first language is Spanish, didn’t understand the conversations between the social worker and the teenager about having an abortion. And the birth mother said that her daughter was very excited to have the baby.
According to the city’s deputy mayor for Health & Opportunity, “between September 2006 and March 31, 335 minors under DHS care became pregnant. Of those, 119 resulted in abortions. Of those abortions, 54 were done by judge’s order.”
And this particular abortion had to be done in New Jersey, not PA, because it’s illegal to abort at 24 weeks (6 months pregnant) in PA.
Need a visual? Here’s what the baby looks like at 24 weeks:
Babies survive and thrive after being prematurely delivered at 24 weeks, and even earlier sometimes. Last week it was reported that a baby survived for two days after a botched abortion a 22 weeks. The story concluded with a line about a baby who was born at 24 weeks and is now a healthy 5-year-old.
Apparently threats were made to the teen, who has a one-year-old, that the baby would be taken away if she had it and her children would be split. No one has any solid answers as to whether or not the teen really was coerced or if strong-arm tactics were used.
However, it is known that the foster mother didn’t know where the girl was on the day of the abortion. The DHS caseworker arranged to have the teenager taken to the abortion clinic in the morning, during a school day, for the first part of the abortion where the doctor would inject a solution to stop the baby’s heart, and then arrive back at home very late. The next day, DHS had a van take the girl back to the clinic to deliver the dead baby. Sound familiar? We reported on a teenager in the Seattle area who was taken to get an abortion during school hours without the parents’ knowledge just recently.
What an incredibly sad story.
