In their zeal to turn women and others who become pregnant into second-class citizens with fewer rights than their male counterparts, some right-wing judges in particular have tried to cover their tracks by relying on ambiguous statutory language. This enables them to effectively cloak their (usually religious-based) motivations for punishing behavior they disapprove of by pretending to defer to their state legislatures, especially in cases where such matters are in reality left to their own discretion.
Such was the case this January in Florida, when Judge Jared E. Smith of the Circuit Court of Hillsborough county, Florida, ruled that a 17-year-old young woman was insufficiently “mature” to terminate her unwanted pregnancy. The woman, identified only as “Jane Doe” due to her age, had sought judicial approval pursuant to the Florida law that allows pregnant minors an opportunity to escape the often-impossible task of obtaining their parents’ approval in order to obtain an abortion by seeking judicial “permission.”
This type of cumbersome “judicial bypass” procedure, codified in 38 states, has been a means used by the religious right and its enablers in Republican state legislatures to further traumatize those who become pregnant while still paying lip service to their rights as protected by the law. (Now that Roe is overruled and abortion can be fully outlawed, these statutes in abortion-denying states will mostly become moot.)
As acknowledged by the Florida Second District Court of Appeal, which quickly reversed his decision, Florida law required Smith to make a determination as to Jane Roe’s “maturity” before he could issue his edict: