A U.K. court ordered an 11-year-old girl who got pregnant as a result of rape to abort her unborn child, even though she, with her mother’s support, wanted to keep the baby.
The girl, identified in court documents as AZ, was raped in May, allegedly by a 14-year-old boy she had met on the internet. (According to the Sun, the accused boy “denies having any sexual contact with AZ.”) The next month, she was allegedly raped by another 14-year-old boy. The first assault caused her, then aged 10, to conceive a child.
Neither AZ nor her parents sought an abortion. Instead, “health authority bosses had asked the judge to rule that a termination of pregnancy was in the girl’s best interests and that taking tissue from the placenta for forensic testing was in her best interests,” reported the Telegraph.
After hearing the case in the Family Division of the High Court in London, Justice Emma Arbuthnot concurred with the health authorities, ordering both the abortion and the forensic testing of the placenta for use in the criminal investigation.
The hearing took place in September, but documents from it were only released in mid-October.
According to those documents, “A team of specialists considered the risks to the child if she proceeded with the pregnancy and ‘unanimously’ agreed an abortion was in her best interests,” wrote the Sun.
Those risks, averred Arbuthnot, were “clear and compelling.” “The physical health risks set out were those over and above the normal risks of pregnancy,” she noted.
Doctors testified that the youngest girl for whom studies on the dangers of pregnancy exist is 14. “They considered that the risks would be at least as high and probably higher for a child as young as AZ,” wrote Arbuthnot.
“I was particularly struck by the evidence about the impact of the size of AZ’s anatomy: whereas many adult women struggle with the pain of childbirth, a child of eleven is likely to have a much worse experience,” she explained.
“Her body may be just too small to give birth other than by a caesarean. Any experience would be likely to traumatize her.”
That may be true, but an abortion is just as likely to traumatize her. On top of the normal trauma experienced by many women undergoing abortions, “ending the life of a baby conceived through rape can trigger additional trauma for already traumatized rape victims,” observed LifeSiteNews.
Then there is the matter of the victim of the abortion. While, as far as health officials and Arbuthnot are concerned, abortion is in AZ’s best interest, it is clearly not in her baby’s.
Besides, AZ did not want to abort her child.
“When the many risks of continuing with the pregnancy were explained to her, AZ said she was ‘happy’ to be pregnant and wanted to continue with it,” noted Arbuthnot. “She said it made her feel ‘special.’ The mother supported AZ’s position.”
Both doctors and the judge contended that an 11-year-old is not mature enough to make such decisions on her own.
“Her views involved ‘naive magical thinking’ in her approach to the pregnancy,” wrote Arbuthnot. “She lacked the intellectual development and capacity to process the complexity of the decisions that had to be made and her emotional investment in one outcome was clearly clouding her judgment. An important factor in AZ’s decision-making was that the birth of a child would ensure she would not have to return to school.”
Of course, as Live Action News pointed out, “Though it is undoubtedly clear that an 11-year-old does not have the ability to make such serious decisions, AZ’s mother was willing to support her daughter in her decision. Furthermore, if a child does not have the maturity to decide to keep a child, they don’t have the maturity to decide to kill one, either.” (Emphasis in original.)
It is also worth noting that if AZ wanted to obtain puberty blockers from a willing doctor, she would likely be considered competent to make such a decision. A U.K. appeals court ruled in 2021 that “it was for clinicians rather than the court to decide on competence” in such matters. In the U.K., at least, minors’ fitness to make their own medical decisions appears to be directly correlated with their decisions’ wokeness.
Ultimately, AZ’s parents were convinced to support her abortion, and AZ agreed to abide by their decision. But one must wonder about their competence, too.
The Telegraph noted that “specialists and professionals involved in the girl’s care” said she “had been ‘self-harming’ following a family bereavement and had a history of ‘neglecting herself.’” They testified that she had been “watching pornography since the age of eight” and had probably “been putting herself into ‘sexually exploitable positions.’”
AZ’s mother told a social worker “that there was a risk that if AZ’s pregnancy was terminated, she would just go out and become pregnant again,” Arbuthnot wrote. “For some reason the parents do not appear to be able to prevent this.”
Arbuthnot’s proposed solution was to get AZ to accept a birth-control implant. She noted that health officials had not asked to be allowed to force one on her, but “it is hoped that AZ may well agree to this.”
AZ appears to be in a bad situation all the way around, but the government’s interventions are likely to make it even worse — at the expense of an innocent human being.
