By Dave Andrusko
WJHL cuts right to the chase:
A Southwest Virginia family is suing a Bristol abortion clinic, Dickenson County’s Department of Social Services (DSS), and several individuals for allegedly pressuring their 15-year-old daughter into having an abortion against her will and without legal consent in January.
The civil suit claims a DSS employee pressured the girl into the abortion and that the DSS’s local director tried to retroactively get judicial consent “for the unlawful abortion.” Both are named as defendants along with the abortion clinic’s director, whom the suit accuses of joining in the social worker’s efforts to persuade the girl. The suit also names a doctor from the clinic as a defendant.
“It’s just shocking that it happened,” said Tim McAfee, the family’s attorney. The civil suit seeks $10 million in compensatory damages and a total of $5.4 million in punitive damages.
“Some people would say you killed something,” McAfee told News Channel 11. “The young lady has killed her baby. That’s how she looks at it.”
The child’s parents are listed as plaintiffs along with the child, identified as “CRFM.” She was about three months pregnant and her abortion was chemically-induced.
The girl’s pregnancy, according to the suit, “occurred as a result of a conscious choice of CRFM.” She “intended to take her child to full term and intended to deliver her baby at the appropriate time,” Jeff Keeling reported.
CRFM was approximately three months pregnant, the suit claims, “when the Dickenson County Department of Social Services (DSS) removed her from her father’s care on Jan. 19,” according to Keeling.” She had been staying with her father since August, the suit says, and was placed with a friend of the family.”
The suit further asserts that “CRFM had told her mother she didn’t want an abortion but was being pressured by DSS to do so and that she ‘promised her mother that she was not going to abort the baby,’” Keeling reported.
DSS did not inform either CRFM’s parents or her guardian ad litem of the abortion, the suit alleges. Nor did DSS “provide medical records of it to her parents ‘despite multiple written requests.’”
‘The civil suit claims a DSS employee pressured the girl into the abortion and that the DSS’s local director tried to retroactively get judicial consent ‘for the unlawful abortion,’” according to Madeline Leesman [https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/02/22/family-sues-abortion-clinic-n2619797].
“The suit alleges a host of potential negative physical and emotional effects on CRFM,” Keeling reported. “ It claims the actions of DSS, the clinic and the people involved interfered with her parents’ rights by not involving them in the decision, not informing them of the abortion and denying access to medical records.”