The "Other" Schiavo case. Remember this one?

I was digging around my "Republican Family Values" file this weekend after all the news about Teri Schiavo that no blog or poster has mentioned. I had clean forgotten that there was a related case to Teri Schiavo.

Here it is. Think it shows a Republican pattern of indifference to suffering in order to satisfy its base?


J.D.S. was abandoned into the arms of the state before she was three!
When she turned 18, without in any way becoming an adult, the state did not provide a guardian.
J.D.S., who weighs only 88 pounds and suffers from seizures, autism and cerebral palsy.
J.D.S. is mentally retarded; found by the courts to have the mental capacity of a 4- or 5-year-old.
She lived in a group home (i.e., state run).
The Department of Children and Families where she languished, is so scandal-ridden that it "lost" hundreds of children in the system, including a girl missing for 15 months before department officials knew she was even gone.
When she was 22, the caregivers in the state-licensed group home failed to protect her - from rape.
She can't speak.
She can't say who raped her.
She can't evaluate the risks of her pregnancy.
This pregnant rape victim needs help to oversee her medical care, to make decisions about her health, the health of the fetus, even to collect DNA evidence for the crime.

So, what did the state do?

Well, when the victim was five months pregnant the entire system, including the governor suddenly sat up and took notice. When the state originally asked for a guardian, there was no talk about an abortion, but FLORIDA GOVERNOR JEB BUSH personally intervened to ask that a second and separate guardian be appointed – for the fetus! - setting up competing rights.

And the Radical Right-Wing approved! Brian Fahling of the American Family Association said approvingly, "Something has to be said, finally, about who occupies the womb."

Prior to Jeb’s action, in 1989, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that fetuses can't have guardians because they aren't legally people. This is the precedent that Jeb Bush challenged. It was also a pre-emptive strike to give the "unborn" the same legal status as the born, an attempt to legally define a fetus as an "unborn child" and define a fertilized egg as a "person." This was an attempt, through laws and regulations, designed to separate the woman from her womb and, of course, from her right to decide.

Ultimately, J.D.S. was failed again. A judge postponed the decision to appoint a guardian for her until she was past the point of pregnancy that may effectively preclude any abortion.

Postscript: On Jan. 10, 2004, a Florida appeals court panel ruled that the state could not appoint a guardian for the fetus. "We find no Florida statute or case law that has determined a fetus to be a person," Justice Emerson R. Thompson wrote. In a concurring opinion, Justice Richard B. Orfinger wrote that "taking control" of a pregnant woman's body by appointing a guardian for her fetus would create a "universe of troubling questions."

After her daughter was born Aug. 30, tests determined that the 75-year-old husband of the woman who ran the group home (He's 75! Jeeeze, how old was she?) had raped her. The man has since been found mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Sources:
Ellen Goodman, Washington Post, Saturday, May 24, 2003; Page A31
Abby Goodnough, New York Times, 11 January 2004.
I screwed up. At the time, I failed to copy the links. Sorry.

why does all of this shit happen in Florida?

Bush

Maybe this name will end up the same as the name John for any future British kings.