Appeals Court Blocks Florida Minor From Getting An Abortion

A Florida appeals court affirmed Monday a lower judge’s ruling that a 16-year-old minor in the state cannot get an abortion, based on a law requiring parental consent for minors, forcing the teenager to carry her pregnancy to term as such consent laws come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

A three-judge panel at the First District Court of Appeals in Florida sided with a circuit court judge in Escambia County, who ruled that the plaintiff “had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy,” as Florida law requires.

The state’s parental consent law, enacted in 2020, lets minors seek a “judicial bypass” and get court permission to get an abortion if they can’t get consent from a parent or guardian.

The judges said their decision was based on the fact that Florida law only allows them to overturn the lower court’s ruling if there was any “abuse or discretion”—rather than because of any actual evidence in the case—and the circuit judge’s ruling was “neither unclear nor lacking.”

The plaintiff, who was ten weeks pregnant and identified only as Jane Doe 22-B, told the court “she ‘is not ready to have a baby,’ she doesn’t have a job, she is ‘still in school,’ and the father is unable to assist her,” First Circuit Judge Scott Makar noted in his opinion concurring and dissenting in part with the court’s ruling.