A British judge has authorized doctors to perform an abortion on a pregnant Catholic woman with developmental disabilities and a mood disorder, despite the objections of the woman’s mother and the woman herself. The woman is 22 weeks pregnant.
“I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn't want it is an immense intrusion,” said Justice Nathalie Lieven in her ruling in the Court of Protection, June 21.
“I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society's views of termination,” Lieven explained, arguing that her decision is in the best interest of the woman.
Lieven is most famous for arguing that Northern Ireland's laws against abortion were equivalent to forcing women to undergo "physical and mental torture", so I suppose her decision is not surprising. It is remarkable how much barbarism is committed with the insistence that it is in the 'best interest' of those on whom it is perpetrated.
ADDED LATER: The decision has been overruled on appeal, but the reasoning for the overruling has not yet been released.
