Attorney: Disabled Miami woman's pregnancy TERMINATED (FL rape case)

http://www.heraldtribune.com ^ | 5-30-03 | AP

[OXENinFLA]

Attorney: Disabled Miami woman's pregnancy terminated print

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The Associated Press

A fetus in its 24th week of development has been aborted by doctors who said the life of the mother - a retarded, deaf and seizure-prone rape victim - would be threatened if the baby was carried to full term, an attorney said Friday. The abortion and tubal ligation to prevent future pregnancies were performed late Thursday at Jackson Memorial Hospital, said Lance Block, who represents the disabled woman's mother. Miami-Dade police took DNA samples from the fetus in an effort to identify the father, whom officials believe raped the 28-year-old woman, he said. The victim is "doing well" despite the tragedy she has been a part of, he said. In a statement released Thursday by Miami-Dade Circuit Court, the judge who oversaw the case, Arthur Rothenberg, said the disabled woman's mother strongly objected to any other solutions. She "did not want her daughter to be subjected to any more of an invasive procedure than was absolutely necessary to terminate the pregnancy and for a tubal ligation," Rothenberg said.

[FITZ]

Your deity seems to be absent. Ugly stuff has been going on for millenia, but no sign of any gods.

This was one of the very ugliest of all stuff ---of course you don't see God anywhere in a case like this ---not in the rapist, not in the hateful grandmother, not in the doctors. God doesn't hate, he doesn't destroy ---you have to look at cases where love won out and you'll see signs of God.

[Salvation]

I thought they were going to let the baby be born.

[krb]

The victim is "doing well" despite the tragedy she has been a part of...

I don't get it...the baby survived the abortion? < / sad sarcasm >

[tiamat]

Good that you have offered.

Tia

[sport]

You are in trouble now. cgk said the same thing and was throughly chastized.

[AuH2ORepublican]

Next to murder, rape is the most heinous crime imaginable, and I believe we should impose capital punishment on rapists. Rapists are the scum of the earth, and do not deserve to breathe the same air we breathe. But the baby, an innocent party in this crime, does not deserve to die. While I understand perfectly well that it would be very difficult for a woman to raise a child conceived during her rape (and believe me, as a married man, I can tell you it would not be much easier for her husband), the morally correct decision would be for the woman to carry that child until his or her birth, and then give him or her up for adoption to one of the many families that would provide a good home for the child. I know it wouldn't be easy or pleasant for the rape victim or her husband, but I don't think killing her baby will make her feel any better.

As for the hypothetical regarding the 10-year-old, unless continuation of her pregnancy actually placed her life in jeopardy (in which case I would have to support whatever measure would save her life), I would hope and pray that I would be strong enough to stand up for the right to live of the baby conceived through no fault of his or her own. And I would hope and pray that the girl understood that two wrongs don't make a right, and that killing her baby won't erase the memory of what happened to her.

It all boils down to this: Either you believe that a fetus is a human being, as science and logic tells us, or you believe that it's akin to a cancerous tumor. For those of us who believe that life begins at conception, it makes no difference whether the baby is a product of rape or incest, since that does not make the baby any less human or any less deserving of the right to live.

Rape is wrong, and so is murder, and both should be punishable by death. But let the baby live.

[A-teamMom]

Amen. It boggles my mind to read some Freepers derisive comments about pro-lifers. Yes, the issue is black and white. So is right and wrong.

[najida]

The Question was : " Who here would have opened their home , loved, provided for, and taken responsibility for that child that raped woman would have had?"

Not I....
Not at this point in my life (that is why I have kept my mouth shut).

I will abide, MOST reluctantly, with an abortion in three situations: 1) Rape. 2) Incest. 3) In cases where the Mother's life is endangered. Under these conditions, said abortion needs to happen within the first two months. Abortion is killing, and after that time is damn-sure murder.

Ditto....Especially incest... I lived in a situation like "Bastard Out of Carolina",it was happening all around me...
To more than one little girl I knew....
And I had a father and uncle who, erm, ah...
Scared me spitless
Words can't describe what it is like.

Have YOU signed up to adopt a child? Yep, for years....Spent $$$$ on agencies, overseas stuff etc...

Are YOU willing to put your money where your mouth is?
10 years ago, yes...
Now, no.

Would you accept a crack-baby? How about a child with deformities? 10 years ago, maybe.
I work with the disabled/MR/mentally ill now daily....

Have you adopted a child?
I went into the foster partent program because in this state it is the quickest way to adopt....My late husband and I had been through every route.....we were turned down because our total ages were too high (he was much older than I). He died 3 months after we finished foster parent classes. I fostered then by myself (working full time) with my mother as my 'second' parent. When she died two years later, I quit (a broken heart, grief and I am on the road too much).

I expect that I have just kicked open a sh*t-storm with this post. Matter of fact, I hope so! Cos I get nauseated at some of the pious grandstanding I see.

Hey, you get no complaints from me. The real eye opener was when I was handed a book a foot thick of kids up for adoption in this state. There are lots of kids out there for adoption...they just aren't healthy, white, single babies.

[tiamat]

Would you be willing to adopt?

Tia

[Mr. Silverback]

ProLife Ping!

If anyone wants on or off my ProLife Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.

[tiamat]

THANK YOU!

Your answers are well thought out and honest.

I worked for years in the "health-care industry". Half-way houses and group homes, mostly. Spent a lot of time caring for persons that society does not want. Heart-breaking, especially the crack-babies. After I saw the same damn crack-mother for the third time in two years I had to ask for a transfer Else I would have done violence to her.

The incest thing gives me the willies and I do not blame you a bit.

I don't believe I culd have an abortion myself under ANY circumstance, and that includes rape, but I will not tell anyone else they must not.

Thank you again.

Tia

[Sgt_Schultze]

(Whoops)

[MHGinTN]

"The last 24 hours marked a critical turning point for a 24-week-old unborn baby ... " You will note, the serial killer hired to do this killing 'injected' an agent to anesthetize and kill the alive, sensing, aware, BABY, before bringing the cadaver into the air-world. With that act the serial killer confrimed that an alive sensing aware child was being executed (like a heinous criminal), yet the 'procedure' was deemed expedient. I want to know what the expediance was meant to avoid, since attending physicians for the woman and the alive child determined that the child was healthy and no threat to the Mother only a week before the serial killer was hired. I notice the child was deemed to have only a 10% chance to stay alive, to survive if delivered at 24 weeks. [I wonder, would the judge want to be harvested for organs if his attending physician told him he had a 90% chance of dying, just go ahead and get it over? The BABY was already alive, already a fellow member of the human race, but with a 90% chance of dying ...] Since the entire pregnancy was not endangering the child or the Mother, why was it not possible to wait four or five more weeks, or even eight more weeks and deliver a healthy alive baby without making the woman an accomplice to ... well, accomplice to fulfilling the expedience? R.I.P. Little One. You will someday meet your Momma ... and I'm looking forward to meeting you!

[Alamo-Girl]

Jeepers... Thanks for the heads up...

[Brad’s Gramma]

Your deity seems to be absent. Ugly stuff has been going on for millenia, but no sign of any gods.

Hang on, Dude. The ride's about to get real bumpy.

At which point, you may want to reconsider your whole stance on GOD!

[MHGinTN]

Gramma, atheism is the ultimate form of self-aggrandizement. Leave it be; irrational self promotion is seeping from this poster's remarks.

[arasina]

"Father, forgive them. They know not what they do."

[Under the Radar]

Thank you for this post. It is a good one, and important for us to consider. I hope you get more answers than I have seen.

Myself, no, I am not willing to adopt. I am anti-abortion except in the situations you mentioned. It probably does make me a hypocrite.

However, there are plenty of healthy white babies who *would* be snapped up in a heart-beat as soon as they are born, who are killed needlessly. I saw enough abortion-as-birth-control in college to make me pro-life. These girls would have had the kind of children people pay thousands of dollars for the chance to adopt.

[Under the Radar]

This "could have been" this grandmothers chance at a "child" without defects. Someone to bring up the way she wanted to with her daughter.

Maybe she's wrought with anger and guilt and knows that it was her fault that her disabled daughter is the way she is.

You should be appalled at this post. Who are you to say that the mother of the woman sees her child, although disabled, as anything less than perfect? Who are you to say that she didn't bring her daughter up the way she wanted to?

And how do you know why the woman is disabled in the first place? Your callous idiocy is digusting. You know nothing about this family. You have read a few short paragraphs on a website and think it makes you equal to the family in making these decisions. Shame on you. Shame on you!

[LWalk18]

However, there are plenty of healthy white babies who *would* be snapped up in a heart-beat as soon as they are born, who are killed needlessly. I saw enough abortion-as-birth-control in college to make me pro-life. These girls would have had the kind of children people pay thousands of dollars for the chance to adopt.

This is the honest reality- when people say there "thousands of loving families waiting for babies to adopt" they are referring to healthy white infants. I don't what race the woman is, but the truth is that is she is black and the baby was born with special needs it would languish in foster care.