Florida court rules lawyer-less, orphaned 16-year-old girl not 'mature enough' to get abortion

Here’s a Florida snapshot of the new abortion landscape:

A 16-year-old orphan identified only as “Jane Doe 22-B” became pregnant, and in the 10th week of her pregnancy sought to get an abortion this month in North Florida.

The state law requires parental consent for minors to get abortions. Without parental consent, minors who become pregnant must petition a state circuit court judge to issue a “judicial bypass” to permit the abortion.

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In 2020, Republican state lawmakers championed and passed the Parental Notice of Abortion Act, which established third-degree felony charges against any doctor who performs an abortion on a minor who lacked either the parental consent or the judicial bypass.

A Florida orphan loses her way in court

In this case, the girl’s parents were both dead, she was living with a relative and had been assigned a guardian ad litem by the state. These are adults who are assigned to represent “the best interest of the child” in cases of child abandonment, neglect, or abuse.

The girl submitted a hand-written two-page application with the Escambia County Circuit Court that sought an abortion through a judicial bypass.

The girl failed to check a box on the form that would have provided her, for free, an attorney to represent her in this legal matter.

An appellate judge later noted that due to this “inexplicable” failure to proceed without free legal representation, the girl needlessly put herself through a judicial wringer.

Her application for a judicial bypass was unnecessary because, as the girl indicated in her application, her guardian “was fine” with her decision to get an abortion.

“If the minor’s guardian consents to the minor’s termination of her pregnancy, all that is required is a written waiver from the guardian,” First District Court of Appeal Judge Scott Makar wrote. “Such a written waiver would be self-executing, meaning that the minor need not invoke the judicial bypass procedure at all.”

You might think that somebody in the judicial system may have stepped in to help this lawyer-less teenage orphan to fix what is essentially a paperwork matter.

But instead, she was put through a hearing designed for teenagers who wanted abortions against the expressed wishes of their parents.

Without lawyer, Florida girl loses at hearing over abortion

Without the legal help she was entitled to receive, the girl was subjected to the judicial bypass process with Escambia County Circuit Judge Jennifer Frydrychowicz in a non-adversarial hearing held in the judge’s chambers.

The girl was present with her case worker and her guardian ad litem child advocate manager.

The judge, who was first appointed to the bench by former Gov. Rick Scott, and elevated to the circuit court by Gov. Ron DeSantis two years ago, wrote after the hearing that the girl was “credible” and “open” during the hearing, and that at times she appeared to be “stable and mature enough to make this decision.”

The judge noted that the girl had done research on her medical options and their consequences and that she “acknowledges she is not ready for the emotional, physical or financial responsibility of raising a child” and “has valid concerns about her ability to raise a child.”

The girl told the judge that she is still in school and the would-be father would not offer any assistance.

Nevertheless, the judge found that the girl’s “evaluation of the benefits and consequences of her decision is wanting.” And that the girl had been traumatized by the death of a friend shortly before her decision to seek an abortion, and that may be playing into her decision. Maybe she would later change her mind over time, the judge reasoned.

Under the new abortion law in Florida, abortions would become illegal for any girl or woman after the 15th week of pregnancy — which was just five weeks away in this case.

The judge denied the girl permission for an abortion but left open the possibility that she could reapply and further clarify her request in the future, a future that was extremely limited.

“Reading between the lines, it appears that the trial court wanted to give the minor, who was under extra stress due to a friend’s death, additional time to express a keener understanding of the consequences of terminating a pregnancy,” Makar wrote.

Abortion law: ordering "immature" girls into motherhood

But a subsequent review of the trial-court judge’s ruling by a three-judge panel in the First District Court of Appeal found that there was no need to overturn the trial court’s decision to deny the girl an abortion or to send the issue back to the trial court for a future rehearing.

The appellate court ruled that the girl “had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.”

The denial of her abortion should stand with no rehearing necessary, the appeals court rules.

Amazing. Let this sink in. This is an orphaned teenager being denied an abortion because she doesn't have her dead parents' written permission.

And for those of you keeping score at home, consider this:

If the state, based on the inherent biases of a total of four judges, finds a traumatized, pregnant, orphaned underage teenager to be too immature to make important decisions about herself, and too financially and emotionally unstable to even take care of her own needs, then she should be forced into non-consensual motherhood rather than an otherwise-legal abortion.

That’s where we’re at in the “free state of Florida.”

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Abortion law 2022: Orphaned teen denied end of pregnancy in Florida