A British judge has ordered a mentally disabled woman to get an abortion over the objections of her Catholic mother, who said she would have cared for the baby.
The woman was 22 weeks pregnant when Justice Nathalie Lieven issued a ruling June 21 ordering the abortion to be performed. The pregnant woman has not been identified publicly, although she is in her 20s. She wanted to give birth.
“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,” Lieven said in her ruling in the Court of Protection, according to the Catholic News Agency.
“I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society’s views of termination,” Lieven wrote.
The woman’s mother, a member of the Nigerian Igbo community, had argued an abortion would violate her religious and community beliefs. She had asked the judge to allow her to take care of the baby. The mother and the pregnant woman are Catholic.
“I think [the woman] would suffer greater trauma from having a baby removed [from her care],” Lieven said, because “it would at that stage be a real baby.”
Doctors for the government-funded National Health Service trust had argued the woman needed an abortion.
“[Her] treating clinicians consider that on balance, a termination is in her best…
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