Florida Court rules against parents rights

Florida Court rules against parents rights

Yesterday a Florida appeals court ruled in favor of a team who wanted to have an abortion without her parent’s knowledge. The ACLU represented the girl who filed the suit.

The following from lifenews.com:

Florida appeals court has approved a teenager’s request to have a secret abortion without her parents knowing. The ruling, which overturns a local judge’s decision, is exposing a problem in the state where virtually all of the waivers request to bypass parental notification are granted.

The unnamed teenager is about nine weeks pregnant and her parents don’t know yet. She wants to get an abortion without her parents knowing, but she doesn’t meet the intent of the judicial bypass.

The bypass is meant to be a provision that allows teenagers in problematic home situations involving abuse or potential abuse to get abortions without subjecting themselves to a threatening parent.

In this case, the teenager simply says she doesn’t want to have her baby because she fears it will derail her future education plans.

The ruling, that we as parents do not have the right or capability to raise our children, is disappointing enough. Parental prerogative comes with the knowledge that we have more life experience and wisdom to make critical decisions than do our children. The court has taken that decision out of our hands, and without good reason. However, more disturbing is the reasoning behind the decision.

Although her parents are pro-life, the teen is not and the court assumed that their knowing about their young daughter’s pregnancy would damage her relationship with them.

Amazing! The court is seeking to protect our relationship with our children, as if the court should have any right or voice in such a case. Our relationship with our children is rarely strife free, nor should they be. Our children do not need friends, they have plenty of those, they need parents; and parents need the right to parent without court interference.

Another element of this case which should be of particular interest is the fact that this ruling was in direct violation of a parental consent law which was passed by a 65% majority back in 2004. Unfortunately the 2004 law has been mostly ineffective thanks to the efforts of our friends at the ACLU. This is another example of the ACLU pushing its agenda despite the will of the people.

Since July 2005, when the new law took effect, 548 teens have sought the judicial bypass, mostly with help from attorneys representing local abortion centers, and 514 of those requests have been granted, the Times indicated.

Part of the reason for the 94 percent judicial waiver approval rate is a new project by the ACLU, which targets a web site at teenagers to tell them how they can request legal help to obtain a secret abortion. Since March, the ACLU has pushed 172 teenagers into secret abortions through the court process.

It is no surprise that the ACLU is working hard to mitigate the effectiveness of this law, the ties between the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are old and deep. But targeting our kids in such a manner is sad and, dare I say it, evil. If we, legally speaking, do not trust our young teenagers to drink, smoke, own weapons, drive, vote, serve in the military – why can we so easily given them the choice of life and death for another? Further, how can we ask them to make that decision without the input, support, and counseling of their parents?

Pro-life advocates in Florida are working to tighten up the notification law, specifically the judicial bypass elements which are being abused by pro-abortion advocate judges. I pray they succeed.