Alabama lawyer and “pregnancy counselor” attack child rape victim who’s allowed to abort pregnancy

Win Johnson (top) and Lorie Mullins

This may be the ugliest display of anti-abortion fanaticism I’ve yet seen from public officials. An Alabama court recently ruled that a 12-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped by a family member could terminate the pregnancy without parental consent; the waiver was required since the girl and her siblings were removed from their parents’ home. That’s all well and good.

Except for the reaction from a former court official and a pregnancy counselor (of all people), who had this to say about the (thankfully unnamed) child victim:

Win Johnson, who was legal director for the Administrative Office of Courts under former Chief Justice Roy Moore, and Lorie Mullins, executive director of COPE Pregnancy Center in Montgomery, held a news conference today at the state judicial building.

[…]

He said it's stunning that courts would issue an opinion saying that a 12-year-old "was mature enough -- and I'm going to put this in its starkest terms -- to decide to murder her own child in her womb."

"Now, nobody has said that to her, I bet you, in any of her counseling," Johnson said. "Nobody has explained that to her in its starkest, rawest form, like that. But what if it was, what if she really thought through it, even as a 12-year-old and said, 'Gosh, I don't want that on my conscience.' "

I honestly don’t know how to react beyond visceral disgust. That anyone can become so twisted by ideology, so blind to the suffering of others, that they feel compelled to publicly scorn a fucking child rape victim over her decision not to have her life ruined by an unwanted pregnancy … I can’t imagine any clearer sign of the anti-abortionist disconnect between belief and reality. They’re too obsessed with protecting blastocysts and fetuses and other insensate lumps of cells to give a damn about the real and present physical and psychological harms that might arise from forcing a child to carry a pregnancy (from rape or otherwise) to term.

"She probably has trouble deciding what shirt to wear to school," Mullins said. "The courts, 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.

[…]

"She has been victimized her entire life," Mullins said. "And now she's being put in the position of being the perpetrator of this newest violence, because that's what's going to happen. Whether she grasps it now, there's a point in her life where she is going to understand what she has done and how it is going to impact. The depression, the substance abuse that happens so often, the problems with future relationships.["]

They seem to understand that she’s far too damn young to be saddled with the responsibilities and burdens of adulthood. But somehow, a pregnancy and a baby to take care of don’t count. Maybe they think the infant would raise itself? Or perhaps, since (as anti-choicers are fond of arguing) she can always give it up for adoption, that negates any problem with being forced to carry around a heavy lump in her belly for nine months, particularly at an age where her body is hardly built to support it. Self-determination, bodily autonomy? Medical risks? Never heard of ’em.

And of course, that guff about post-abortion depression and drug use and so on are tired old myths peddled by anti-choicers to try and scare women away from terminating unwanted and/or dangerous pregnancies. You’d be forgiven for thinking a pregnancy counselor would know better than to regurgitate long-debunked lies, but that would mean forgetting she’s the head of COPE, a Christian crisis pregnancy center, so she’s clearly more interested in deceiving pregnant women than providing any competent medical advice.

"I don't know what the perfect answer is, but I know this is not it. If I could actually speak to this child, the only thing I could say to her is you've been robbed of your childhood. Don't rob yourself of your future."

Says the unqualified “pregnancy counselor” who wants the young girl to carry a rape pregnancy to term, regardless of the trauma that might inflict on her.

There’s also a video of their remarks, but to hell with that – the text was bad enough.

Finally, in case you were wondering where these people’s warped mindsets come from, here’s a hint:

Two years ago, in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage, Johnson sent a letter to the legal adviser for then-Gov. Robert Bentley saying that, "Public officials are ministers of God assigned the duty of punishing the wicked and protecting the righteous."

There may be no religious test for public office, but it’s not hard to argue that anyone who serves only to inject their sectarian values and practices into their work shouldn’t have any role in a secular government.

(via Friendly Atheist)