A couple years ago, a young Navy wife in the Navy port of Everett, WA was carrying a baby that was found to have almost NO brain. She pled with a federal court to get the government to pay for her abortion, and she won.
Now, two years later, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the feds are still fighting her and want their money back!
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Federal lawyers have aggressively appealed the Navy wife’s case, often using moral arguments against abortion. The case focuses on the Hyde Amendment regulations, which forbid use of public funds for abortions except if a mother’s life is endangered, or in cases of incest or rape — but not for lethal fetal ailments.
After a lengthy tug of war in which Jane Doe’s case bounced between two courts of appeal, on the East and West coasts, arguments will be heard April 8 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in San Francisco. …
Thank god for the 9th Circuit. There’s hope. But it’s an unusual case:
An Air Force wife, Britell filed the only similarly known case involving anencephaly, abortion and military health coverage 11 years ago. It is the case upon which Jane Doe’s is based — Britell v. the United States.
Anencephaly is a neural tube defect that causes a fetus to develop without a forebrain, cerebellum or cranium and which is 100 percent fatal to the fetus, although not to the mother, medical experts say.
The Everett woman, named Jane Doe in court documents to protect her privacy, has declined to be interviewed. She and her husband now have a healthy baby.
Sounds like she has a great advocate attorney, and the local federal judge — Tom Zilly — is a very sharp attorney (used to know him about 25 years ago):
“I can’t understand the impetus behind the government pursuing this case,” Power said of the time and expense federal lawyers have invested. Power, with lawyer Lisa Ratsinova, first argued the case successfully in 2002 as a cooperating attorney for the Northwest Women’s Law Center.
“This young woman didn’t have the money to pay for it herself,” Power said. “Her husband is an enlisted man, and she was essentially earning minimum-wage working at the Navy Exchange, and the procedure becomes more expensive and risky to the mother the further along the pregnancy is carried. We essentially asked the court to force the government to stop withholding payment.”
U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly in Seattle agreed, issuing a strongly worded decision in February 2003 and ordering the military’s Tricare medical system to pay for the abortion.
But the battle continues.
Get this: When the federal prosecutors argued that “the government could not pay for an activity contrary to the ‘moral objections of many Americans,'” Judge Zilly “responded that ‘this argument has no merit. The government funds many activities such as the death penalty over the moral objections of many Americans.'”
Thank god for some common sense. What a further waste of taxpayer money and prosecutorial and judicial time.
Now that has a nice ring to it… ‘spect we could come up with quite a list… War, Propaganda, Graft…
Great diary, I just heard the bare bones of this case on the radio on the way home from work. I certainly hope this gets wide exposure, enough to force them to leave this couple alone. (If it also further alienates any one with common sense or any empathy at all, that’s not a bad thing either.)
The judge sounds great, how refreshing!
I have to admit that this case opened my mind. Several years ago, I read a book by Tim Penny and (a journalist whose name alludes me at the moment). The title of the book is “The 15 Biggest Lies in Politics”. I thought the book did an excellent job of articulating positions on abortion and gun control, particularly. However, one of Penny’s positions was that abortions shouldn’t be paid for with government dollars. At the time, that made sense to me in general terms, but I didn’t consider issues such as this. Thanks for the enlightenment.
It’s also emotionally kinder in a specific case like this. If one knows the outcome — 2/3 of the babies are born without a heartbeat and none live past a month or so (except for one odd case of course cited by the prosecutors) — wouldn’t one rather have an abortion.
I’ll never forget working with a lovely woman who had to carry her dead fetus for weeks — I forget the medical reasons now — but I could not believe the dignity with which she came to work every day, and the terrible emotional and mental suffering she endured while waiting to have the procedure.
And I say that as someone who leans toward the “prolife” side of the left (I think abortion should be legal only in the first trimester in most cases–but anencephaly would be one of the exceptions I’d recognise). I can’t imagine that more than 20 or 30 percent of voters would be on the feds’ side on this one.
Alan
Maverick Leftist