Two anti-abortion lawyers are fighting for a 12-year-old victim of rape and incest to have her baby.
The young girl was raped by a family member and reportedly told the court that she was too scared to have the baby.
The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals upheld this month that the girl should be allowed to terminate her pregnancy.
Ordinarily, children in the US need permission from a parent to have an abortion, but it was decided that this should not be the case here.
Lawyers Lorie Mullins and Win Johnson are trying to get the court’s decision overturned.
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Mullins, who has never met the victim, said that she was not old enough to make this decision herself, and claimed that she would regret it in the future.
“The law has decided that she’s not old enough, wise enough and mature enough to make her own decision about whether or not she wants to drink, to buy a pack of cigarettes to drive a car.
They have now put this decision, this responsibility, in her hands.”
Mullins is also the Executive Director of COPE Pregnancy Center – a group that provides counselling to women who have had abortions.
She also said that if the abortion went ahead, the 12-year-old would be a perpetrator of this “newest violence.”
Johnson said that he believed nobody had explained to the victim what terminating her pregnancy would mean.
“Has anyone explained this to her in its darkest, rawest form? In this case we’re victimising two people.”
He added that the government was supposed to “protect innocent life.”
When the incident took place, the young girl had been living at home with her mother, stepfather, an uncle, and four siblings.
She was taken out of that environment after the rape. She then sought a waiver from the parental consent law that made it illegal for her to have an abortion without parental permission.
This waiver was eventually granted and upheld by the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals.
Mullins and Johnson have said that the girl should not be allowed to make this “life or death” decision.
