Jailed Oregon Woman Wanting Abortion Being Sent to Mental Health Facility
by Robin Marty, RH Reality Check
July 7, 2011 - 6:12pm (Print)
The Oregon woman being held for $65,000 bail as a "flight risk" who might "harm herself or others" after causing damages at a hotel room where she was allegedly believed to be planning to light herself on fire is still not being granted the abortion she is requesting, but she may be one step closer.
Yamhill County Circuit Judge John Collins has announced that Bridget Burkholder will be transferred from the the county jail to a mental health facility, where they will now evaluate her. The facility will also be able to decide whether or not to grant her an abortion, according to the News Register.
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You have NO right to denounce this. I really don't expect this to be accepted because your site delites or doesnt allow any argument.
This woman has the right to make this choice for herself; and she obviously feels it would be the best choice for her. No one should have the right to force her to give birth against her will.
And perhaps you meant "delete"?
I've worked in obstetrics since 1995, and this is the underbelly that our anti-choice friends refuse to acknowledge. Many, MANY unplanned babies are born everyday to women with addictions and/or severe mental health disorders. Adoption is hardly an option for these women; as you might imagine, there's not a line around the block for babies who come from these genes and have developed in a drug-filled environment. Which means these women have and keep the kids, and are far more likely to live in poverty and be scorned by same people who'd like to take away their choices in the first place. I can't think of anything less compassionate, not to mention toxic for our society.
These women have the same rights as the rest of us. Abortion is legal in this country. This woman thinks it is the best option for her. Who is anybody to tell her otherwise?
What next? Many medications used in the treatment of extreme mental illness such as antipsychotics can produce serious even lethal birth defects in fetuses. Are courts going to order pregnant women to be institutionalized and taken off their meds in order to protect a fetus? If a woman's mental illness is under control with these medications, she is competent to decide what she wants to do if she has an unplanned pregnancy. If her choice is that she does not want to surrender her sanity in order to avoid birth defects that must be her choice to make.
As long is the evaluation is performed and everything moves along quickly, ie. within a few days, this sounds perfectly reasonable. There's clearly a question of whether she's in her right mind at this time if she allegedly tried to light herself on fire, and if they don't do the evaluation, the jail faces the unacceptable risk of allowing her to have the abortion and then having her claim she was not in her right mind when she asked for it, which would have dreadful implications for all parties involved. As a lawyer, I believe that in a case like this, where mental competence is questioned, and she would have to be "taken" to the medical procedure rather than traveling there on her own free will and accord, the mental evaluation is absolutely necessary, and I don't see how anyone could suggest otherwise, as long as, as stated, the evaluation is done quickly and resolved within a matter of days, ie. less than a week.
