As if Moms Matter

Friday, March 25, 2005

From The Illinois Leader:

GRANITE CITY - A Sothern Illinois woman was arrested last week after trying to intervene on behalf of her 14-year old daughter's effort to have an abortion. The girl was allegedly taken to an abortion clinic by the mother of the man allegedly to have impregnated the 14-year old.

It was later determined that the woman who had posed as the "grandmother" to the school authorities was the mother of the male who had fathered the unborn child the 14-year old girl was carrying.

When the parents were notified their pregnant daughter was not at school, they suspected she had been taken to the Hope Abortion Clinic in Granite City.

"My husband and I rushed to the abortion clinic where we saw our daughter's name on the roster and the time she had checked in," the mother said. She then went into the clinic and searched a room filled with young women awaiting abortions but did not see her daughter.

She took a seat near the main desk and said, "I was told I could not prove my daughter was there so I began calling her name. A medical tech at the clinic told me , 'It's your daughter's rights, it's her body. You have no rights.'"

After continuing to call out her daughter’s name and telling her "don't do it," authorities were called and the mother was arrested.

As the police were putting the mother in the squad car, she was crying out, "Please, please, help me...my daughter is in there."

The police in the community in which the family lives allegedly told the girl's mom that they couldn't intervene despite her making a charge that her daughter had been raped (by statute) because the charge was stale--7 weeks after the incident.

Sorry little girl, but to get that piercing or tattoo you need permission from your parents. What, you want an abortion? Why didn't you say so earlier? No problem. Just spread your legs for me and we'll have that little bugger taken out in no time.