Academic performance is important, and everyone knows that it can influence future school choices and career paths.
But no one would have thought that good or bad grades could be related to abortion.
Recently, two judges in Florida handed down question-marked verdicts,
They refused to let a 17-year-old high school girl have an abortion on the grounds that —
"Her GPA is too low".
According to court documents, the girl, alias Jane Doe (equivalent to "anonymous woman"), became pregnant unexpectedly after falling in love with her boyfriend.
Because they were too young and their financial resources were unstable, they decided to beat up their children.
Doe is a minor, and 38 U.S. states, including Florida, require parents to be informed if they want to have an abortion. 21 of these states also require the permission of at least one parent before an abortion.
In Florida, Doe didn't need to provide a parental permission letter, but she had to provide a letter of knowledge, but her parents were conservatives, and they would definitely ask her to give birth when they knew.
Her father once said that abortion was unacceptable unless she was raped.
After questioning her boyfriend's mother, she discovered that the only way to legally have an abortion was to initiate a legal process called Judicial Bypass.
The law allows minors to have abortions themselves without informing their parents, as long as they can convince judges that they are mature and rational enough to bear the consequences of abortion.
So, Doe went to circuit court in Hillsborough County, where she said she had asked her boyfriend's mother (who happened to be a nurse) and other adults who understood the risks of abortion.
Although the clinic refused to provide her with abortion-related information, she checked the information online and read all the abortion precautions on the clinic's official website.
In the end, she was moved and reasoned, saying that she was still young, and she dreamed of joining the military after graduating from high school, and then going to college and entering the nursing profession.
She really can't have kids at 17.
The judge nodded, then rejected her abortion application.
The judge, Jared Smith, said in his verdict that Doe lacked the "maturity" required for the law because she didn't care about her younger siblings at home and was emotionally naïve.
(Jared Smith)
He specifically questioned Doe's grades because she had previously said her grades at school were B,but the current GPA is 2.0.
"It's clear that a B-grade grade doesn't equal a 2.0 GPA, and her testimony is either a lack of intelligence or a lack of honesty. Neither could draw the conclusion that she was mature. ”
To prove that Doe was not mature enough, Judge Smith also wrote, "Doe has never been financially responsible, and she has not even billed her own mobile phone bill."
For these reasons, Judge Smith refused to let Doe have an abortion.
Upon receipt of the verdict, Doe appealed, with three judges from florida's Second District Court of Appeals hearing the case.
After a detailed look at all the legal documents, Judges Darryl Casanueva and Susan Rothstein-Youakim rejected the first-instance judgment, allowing Doy to have an abortion.
(Darry Casanova)
The verdict reads: "Generally speaking, we regard C grade as the average grade that high school students can achieve, so B grade and C grade are not bad. As for the inconsistencies in the descriptions, it may be due to different questions asked by lawyers. ...... In short, there is no evidence that her intelligence is below average. ”
Two judges countered Smith's lack of financial responsibility, saying Doe had saved $1,600 a week for the past year, had two credit cards and spent most of his own money except for his mother.
As for not taking care of her younger siblings, it's even more funny because "she doesn't have any younger siblings at all".
The only one who disagreed with the outcome of the abortion was Judge John Stargel, who repeated Smith's arguments, specifically pointing out that There were grammatical errors in Doe's application and that he had misspelled the boss's name.
"While this may be because she was too nervous to appear in court, the court should also consider other possibilities."
(John Stagle)
No matter how much he shouted, the 2:1 result was out, and Doy could safely go to the abortion.
After this case was exposed by the media, American netizens were angry and funny, when did the court decide on abortion rights by looking at the GPA?
Another obvious, and absurd, is that since girls are not allowed to have abortions because they are "immature", "intellectually incompetent", and "have no financial resources",
So it's good for a naïve, stupid, poor girl to be a mother?
The women's magazine Jezebel wrote sarcastically:
"Teens with unwanted pregnancies are too immature to have abortions. Paradoxically, this means that an immature person should be forced to procreate and become a mother. Since Judge Smith is so concerned about Doe's grades, I doubt very much the pressure of forced childbirth will improve her GPA. ”
This illogical situation was actually buried when the US Supreme Court set the standard for "judicial bypass".
The Supreme Court ruled that a pregnant underage girl could either prove that she was mature enough or that it was in her best interest to have an abortion in order to be granted.
If the verdict is strictly based on "in the best interests", in fact, the girls will almost all win, but in the actual trial, the judge has a lot of room to operate, focusing on "proving that it is mature enough".
If this is a transgender or cosmetic surgery, there is still some truth in judging the maturity of minors.
But this is an abortion operation, which is "self-help" for minors, so what is the need to judge maturity?
Every year, thousands of girls in the United States want to have abortions through "judicial bypass", they are either orphans, children of illegal immigrants, or parents in prison, and more often parents who oppose abortion because of their faith.
The "judicial bypass" was a life-saving straw for them to get their lives back on track, but many were rejected by judges for strange reasons, simply because of their own anti-abortion stance.
In Doe's case, the judge who opposed her was found to be the husband of state Legislator Kelli Stargel. Kelly, a pioneer in Florida's anti-abortion movement, has previously introduced a bill to ban all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions to rape and incest.
(Kelly Stagle)
Judge Stagle himself was the author of the Parental Participation Act, which requires parents to know about underage daughters' abortions.
In more than 40 cases investigated by a reporter from Mother Jones, a judge rejected the girl's application because she had not discussed the abortion decision with the priest.
In 2008, Florida Judge Raul Palomino rejected a 17-year-old girl's application, saying how painful it would be if her Catholic parents knew she had quietly had an abortion.
In 2013, a Nebraska court refused to let a 16-year-old girl have an abortion because she was financially dependent on her adoptive parents, had no job, and couldn't support herself.
Although her parents were absent, the girl supported her younger siblings on her own, proving that the court was wrong. It is even stranger for the court to want a girl who is "unable to support herself" to become a mother.
After the girl appealed, the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the verdict, and she was not as lucky as Doe.
In 2000, an Alabama court rejected a teenage girl's request for an abortion, even though she made it clear that her father had said he would kill her if she dared to get pregnant and go home.
The most devastating case happened to a 17-year-old girl in Alabama.
The girl, who had made herself a perfect abortion applicant by the highest standards of the law, had asked 6 adults beforehand about the precautions of abortion, including two nurses, a Health Ministry official, and an abortion woman.
In court, she described in detail what abortion would be like, named all the surgical instruments, and showed that she had two scholarships and excellent transcripts.
Asked by the judge if she was mentally prepared for an abortion, she replied: "Yes, I am very firm about this decision".
But the judge rejected her application for an abortion on the grounds that she had not spoken to the doctor who performed the abortion.
Although the girl said, doctors refused to communicate with her because the clinic ruled that employees could not contact underage girls before court hearings.
"I'm a mother, and it seems to me that these people are only interested in one thing, and that is getting this young lady's money." The judge said so. The court documents do not mention the judge's name.
"This is a beautiful young lady with a bright future and should not fall into the trap of a butcher."
The girl appealed, but the court of appeal upheld the judge's decision that the excellent, rational and intelligent girl had to go and have children.
Many courts are pushing up the threshold of "judicial bypass". Helena Silverstein, a law professor at Lafayette College, surveyed three states and found that more than half of the courts were unaware or pretended not to know there was a "judicial bypass" process.
Many court clerks, including a judge, told her there was no such thing as a "judicial bypass," and some people referred her directly to anti-abortion agencies and asked her to listen to lectures there.
(Helena Silverstein)
Some courts say that even if there is this law at the top, they will not enforce it locally.
In March 2012, a student at the University of Michigan copied Helena's experiment by calling 67 county courts in Florida.
The results showed that more than two-thirds of the courts were unable or unwilling to provide callers with "judicial bypass" information.
Some conservative officials also want to make things harder.
In the spring of 2014, when Republicans in Alabama passed a law that allowed district attorneys to interrogate teenage girls who wanted to have abortions, what would have been a simple hearing would become more like a trial of a prisoner.
Judges can also adjourn long periods of time, constantly delaying hearings and allowing teenage girls to miss abortions (abortions are illegal after a certain time limit).
The judge was also able to reveal the identity of the girl to "anyone who needed to know," including her parents. Although, the U.S. Supreme Court requires confidentiality.
More brutally, the law allows judges to assign lawyers to fetuses, allowing lawyers to compete in court for the fetus's right to life.
It sounds ridiculous to hire a lawyer for a fetus, but before Alabama passed the law, there were already some judges who did it.
From the 1990s to early 2000s, Arya state judge Walter Anderson appointed local anti-abortion leaders as foetal lawyers to represent the interests of the fetus in dozens of "judicial bypass" hearings.
In 1999, the news told how fetal lawyer Julian McPhillips interrogated a 17-year-old girl.
(Julian McFibbles)
The girl said she was afraid to have children because her father often threatened boys who were interested in her with a gun and could kill his boyfriend if he knew he was pregnant.
Julian roared that the child wanted to survive too, and he even named the 7-week-old fetus "Ashley Baby."
Judge Anderson weighed it up and decided that the teenage girl was mature enough to decide on abortion herself. Julian appealed on behalf of the fetus, and fortunately, the court of appeal ruled that the fetus had no right to appeal, and "Baby Ashley" disappeared.
However, the case inspired two other judges in The state to follow suit and arrange for fetal lawyers at all "judicial bypass" hearings.
Judges in Florida have done so, and at a hearing for a 16-year-old girl, a lawyer said his client was "baby Teresa."
Organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and Jane's Due Process are protesting arbitrary judges' rulings and protesting against fetal lawyers. Jane's Due Process removed several judges who had never approved an abortion application from the hearing list.
But many media outlets said that since 2010, 11 of the 38 states that require parents to know about the "judicial bypass" process have become more stringent.
Five states, including Florida, Kansas and Nebraska, raised the bar for evidence at hearings.
Ohio and Oklahoma restrict teenage girls to apply only in specific places.
Arizona and Arkansas passed laws prohibiting people other than lawyers and court staff from helping teenage girls "get around the justices"...
As the anti-abortion forces in the United States grow stronger, girls are destined to fight an ordeal battle.
They can be perfectly prepared, from all-A transcripts to abundant surgical knowledge,
But if you want to pick a mistake, the judge can always pick it out...
Source: British Stuff