AUSTIN, Texas (BP)–A court in Texas’ Travis County has issued a temporary restraining order preventing the parents of a 16-year-old from forcing her to have an abortion.
A court in Maryland convicted a man three days earlier of killing an expectant mother and the child in her womb.
In Texas, the teen’s mother took her to two different Austin abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region, in an effort to make her undergo the lethal procedure. Neither the girl, who was not identified, nor the baby’s father wants an abortion, but her parents have continued to say they will force her to have one, according to a report from Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).
The girl, who is three months pregnant, became even more convinced she did not want an abortion after she received information from a pro-life advocate who was praying outside one of the clinics, ADF reported. She continues to live with her parents.
The court’s Oct. 18 decision to issue a restraining order came in response to a motion filed by two ADF-affiliated lawyers — Stephen Casey of Round Rock, Texas, and Gregory Terra of Georgetown, Texas – and Allan Parker, president of The Justice Foundation in San Antonio.
“No one should be allowed to decide that an innocent life — especially one that belongs to someone else — is worthless,” Casey said in a written statement. “The right not to have an abortion is protected by law, and this right isn’t relinquished just because someone else considers the child to be an unwanted burden.”
In Maryland, a man was sentenced to 30 years in prison Oct. 15 for killing his pregnant girlfriend after she refused to have an abortion.
Bernard Bellamy, 21, of Oxon Hill was sentenced after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a Prince George’s County court, according to The Gazette, a weekly newspaper in Maryland.
Bellamy’s girlfriend, 19-year-old Valicia Demery of District Heights, Md., died in May while she was four months pregnant. Her body was found after having been run over by and dragged beneath a car, The Gazette reported. Demery had received threatening text messages from Bellamy on the eve of her death.
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Compiled by Baptist Press Washington bureau chief Tom Strode.
