Court-approved abortions for Florida girls in foster care common, judges say

WASHINGTON (BP)–A 13-year-old foster girl’s recent court-approved abortion apparently is not uncommon in Florida.

The girl, known only by the initials L.G., had an abortion May 3 after Palm Beach Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez lifted a state appeals court’s stay.

“It’s a tragedy that a 13-year-old child would be in a vulnerable position where she could be made pregnant, and it’s a tragedy that the baby will be lost,” said Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, according to The Miami Herald. “There’s no good news in this at all.”

The news is even worse for Bush and other pro-life advocates. For years, Florida girls in foster care have had abortions without state interference, some judges who rule in foster care cases told The Herald.

“I have done this for 10 years. If a child wishes to have an abortion, she gets an abortion,” said Cindy Lederman, Miami’s chief juvenile judge.

Many teenagers in foster care have abortions without appearing before a judge, said a former state attorney general and manager of two Florida child welfare legal services offices.

“The key to it is that it was done very low-key,” said Nancy Barshter, according to The Herald. “It wasn’t brought before the court, and it wasn’t discussed among the lawyers unless something else was going on, such as the child had been raped or was truly emotionally disturbed.”

Anita Bock, former administrator of the state’s Department of Children and Families office in Miami, told the newspaper, “[W]e allowed these decisions to be made by adults acting in the best interest” of the girl.

Bush called the assertions of routine abortions for foster children “troubling.”

“If that’s the case, [and] it happens all the time, I’m not aware of that,” Bush said, according to The Herald. “It’s very troubling that children are put in a position, irrespective of whether they’re in the custody of the state, where they feel compelled to have an abortion. It’s a sad fact, and there’s an added responsibility when the state has some degree of responsibility over the well-being of that child.”

The Department of Children and Families had appealed Alvarez’s order to the Fourth District Court of Appeal but dropped its effort to prevent the 13-year-old’s abortion when Alvarez lifted the stay May 3. Bush, a Republican, announced the same day his administration would no longer seek to prevent the abortion, The Herald reported.

The girl fled a DCF-licensed group home in January and became pregnant during the month she was a runaway, according to the newspaper. She had been taken from her parents four or five years ago because of abuse and neglect, The Herald reported.

Florida has no law in effect requiring parental involvement before an underage girl has an abortion. The state’s Supreme Court struck down a law requiring parental notification in 2003.