The UK isn’t nearly as interested in personal liberty as, in my opinion, it should be. Good grief — just see here and here.
But on Monday, a court overruled a lower court’s decision that would’ve forced an abortion on a mentally disabled woman.
I can hardly imagine anything more terrible than the state forcing people at point of gun to undergo knives at medical facilities. Does that not sound reminiscent of 1930’s Germany?
The initial ruling claimed abortion was “in the best interests” of the woman.
The reasons for the turnover weren’t given, but they’ll be made known at a later time.
The anonymous developmentally disabled woman — who’s a Roman Catholic — reportedly possesses the mental capacity of a 6- to 9-year-old.
In response to the initial ruling, nearly 130,000 people signed a petition asking the government to step in in order “to prevent this gross injustice being inflicted by the State on this family and ensure this woman is not forced to have an abortion.”
Scottish Bishop John Keenan of the Diocese of Paisley told the Catholic News Agency the lower court’s action “[introduced] a dangerous new development in the overreach of the power of the state over its citizens.”
Bishop John Sherrington decried the infringement “upon her human rights” as well as ““the right of her unborn child to life in a family that has committed to caring for the child.”
In the lower court ruling, Justice Nathalie Lieven defended herself thusly:
“I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn’t want it is an immense intrusion. I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society’s views of termination. … I think she would like to have a baby in the same way she would like to have a nice doll.”
The pregnant woman, her mother, and a caretaker fought in court for her right to have her baby.
She is 22 weeks pregnant.
-ALEX
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