Boyfriend Gets Judge to Block Abortion Girl’s Parents Wanted

The boyfriend of 17-year-old high school cheerleader, arguing that her parents had coerced her into agreeing to an abortion she did not want, has persuaded a Superior Court judge to temporarily block the operation.

In what both sides of the abortion rights debate hail as a significant case, a Superior Court judge has obtained agreement from the girl and her parents to issue a permanent court injunction today that would block an abortion “against her will and without her free and voluntary and informed consent.”

The judge issued the temporary order restraining the parents and the doctor to prevent “great and irreparable injury” to the teen-ager until the matter could be sorted out at today’s hearing.

Armed with the court order, the boyfriend and two lawyers reached the girl as she was lying on an operating table minutes before the operation was to begin last Friday.

Anti-abortion lawyers and officials, who provided legal help to the couple, see the case as another strike against legalized abortion, while abortion rights advocates say the judge’s decision upholds a woman’s right to choose.

Meanwhile, the couple plan to be married after the girl graduates from a Whittier area high school this spring. Says the boyfriend, a 20-year-old Los Angeles college student, “We’re happy. We have each other now, and we have the baby.”

The couple agreed to be interviewed on condition that they not be identified.

A lawyer for the girl’s parents said Thursday they have given up their efforts to persuade her to have the abortion. But she said the parents were only acting in what they thought were the best interests of their daughter, “and in the interest of what they thought she wanted.”

“They have made peace with their daughter, and they are going to go forward from here,” said the lawyer, Sara Bergstrom, of Fullerton. “They love this girl. She is their child.”

In California, unlike most states, a minor has the right to decide whether to have an abortion no matter what her parents say.

But the girl, in an interview with The Times, said her parents “freaked out” when she told them she was pregnant and wanted to have the baby. She said her parents then made hasty plans for the abortion without consulting her, resisted the boyfriend’s attempts to talk them out of it, and even spirited the girl away to hotel rooms for three nights before the abortion so she couldn’t discuss the matter with anyone.

The girl said her parents told her that if she had the child, it would ruin her life and cause the family shame and embarrassment.

“My parents have a tremendous amount of control over what I do,” she said. “It’s not their fault. I should have been stronger, but I just gave up.”

But the boyfriend did not give up. He said he was angry at being left out of the decision and that he thought his girlfriend of four years was being coerced. He frantically sought help from Right to Life, a Pasadena-based anti-abortion organization, which referred him to the Anaheim-based Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom.

On Jan., 10 lawyers prevailed upon Superior Court Judge John A. Torribio to issue a temporary court order blocking the Jan. 11 procedure.

The parents said they took the girl away from her home for several days before the scheduled abortion because she was upset and in need of a vacation, according to Bergstrom.

Janet LaRue, a lawyer for the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom, hailed the case as a major victory for abortion foes, saying it is the first time they have successfully gone to court to protect the “civil rights” of a minor allegedly being pressured into having an abortion against her will.

“We have checked with our pro-life forces around the country and no one has done anything like this,” LaRue said. “The significant thing is that the parents were forced to realize that they have no choice in the matter and they could not force the daughter to acquiesce to their choice.

“There are lots of other girls out there being pressured into having an abortion by a third party, sometimes parents, other times a boyfriend or through peer pressure,” LaRue said.

Supporters of legalized abortion applauded the case for supporting a woman’s right to choose. But they said abortion foes are the same people fighting for parental consent laws that force women under the age of 18 to obtain parental permission in order to get abortions.

“You can see the hypocrisy here--they want it both ways,” said Katherine Spillar, national coordinator for the Los Angeles-based Fund for the Feminist Majority.

Julian Eule, a constitutional law professor at UCLA, said the case does not appear to set a precedent in allowing minors the right to choose whether to have an abortion. It may be the first time, however, that a court has stepped in to protect a girl’s right to keep her baby against her parents’ wishes, he said.