Thanks, ergo, I see that. What's going on in Florida??
Posted on Fri, May. 30, 2003
Disabled rape victim's pregnancy terminated
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
cmarbin@herald.com
After two weeks of often heart-wrenching legal drama that transformed the unborn child of a disabled rape victim into a national symbol for anti-abortion activists, doctors aborted the 24-week-old fetus Thursday to protect its mother.
Thursday's abortion ended a sad, dramatic two days in which Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Arthur Rothenberg sought to craft a resolution to the legal squabble that protected both the rape victim and her unborn child.
But doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital told the judge late Wednesday the fetus likely would not survive outside the womb.
The abortion was completed, without complication, about 5:30 p.m., and sources told The Herald the woman was recovering well. Detectives from the Miami-Dade Police Department took custody of a sample of the fetus to help identify the father.
Before the controversy was settled Thursday, legal appeals went all the way to the Florida Supreme Court.
At the center of the drama is a 28-year-old woman, originally from New Jersey, who fought a devastating bout with bacterial meningitis at 3 weeks of age. The illness left her deaf and profoundly mentally retarded, with the cognitive skills of a 4-year-old. She also suffers seizures.
For the past three years, she has lived in a Redland-area group home for women with disabilities.
MOTHER'S FEELINGS
The woman's mother, who told The Herald last week she felt ''invisible'' in her efforts to secure a life-saving abortion for her daughter, declined to comment Thursday.
Her lawyer said the controversy over the disabled woman's pregnancy -- which had become a national news story late last week -- was ''devastating'' to the family.
SIMILAR CASE
The woman's plight was strikingly similar to that of a 22-year-old Orlando woman, who also is disabled and whose rape also led to pregnancy. Gov. Jeb Bush announced earlier this month he was asking an Orlando judge to appoint a guardian for the Orlando woman's unborn child. The announcement caused an uproar and rekindled the emotional debate over abortion.
Bush never sought to influence the outcome of the Miami case. But on Tuesday, members for the Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-area conservative religious group, asked Rothenberg to appoint them as lay guardians for the woman's unborn child. The group also asked Rothenberg to halt an abortion he had authorized May 23.
The Miami woman's attorney, Lance Block, called Liberty Counsel's legal efforts ``frivolous, nonsensical and without any legal basis in the state of Florida.''
''This is not a person who is trying to make some pro-abortion statement,'' Block said of the pregnant woman's mother.
Rothenberg, who in court appeared troubled by the decisions he was facing, declined to discuss Thursday's developments. The media office of the Miami-Dade Circuit courts, however, issued a brief statement on the judge's behalf.
''The mother of the ward 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 in the statement.
``She objected strongly to a C-section, which would have been required to attempt a live birth. This, taken together with the greater weight of medical opinion that the fetus was subject to an extremely high risk of morbidity, foreclosed brief reconsideration of alternatives.''
On May 23, Rothenberg held an emotional hearing to decide what to do about the woman's pregnancy, which already had reached 23 weeks. Rothenberg said at the hearing he had received reports from the woman's neurologist that a full-term pregnancy would be dangerous for the woman -- perhaps life-threatening.
SHUNT IN BRAIN
The woman has a shunt in her brain to drain fluid that results from hydrocephaly, a condition she endured through her illness in infancy. A lawyer for the woman testified that pressure on the shunt was making the woman ``violently ill.''
On May 24, Rothenberg authorized doctors at Jackson Memorial to end the pregnancy, surgically prevent future pregnancies and preserve DNA samples that might help identify the woman's rapist. Medical ethicists said the order appeared to be precedent-setting.
But immediately after the Memorial Day weekend, Liberty Counsel filed an emergency motion to halt the procedure and for the appointment of two guardians ad litem.
Rothenberg denied the requests. Appeals to the Third District Court of Appeal and the Florida Supreme Court also were rejected.
By late Wednesday, sources tell The Herald, Rothenberg was considering an order that doctors perform a live birth. That night, the president of Liberty Counsel announced he had ''persuaded'' Rothenberg to enter such an order.
Later that night, however, doctors told the judge the fetus had only about a 10 percent chance of survival and would likely be severely impaired if it lived, sources said.
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