DCF's new policy: Forcing children to have children

BY CARL HIAASEN, Writes for The Miami Herald.

Forcing babies to have babies is now the official policy of Florida's child-welfare agency.

The sadists running the Department of Children & Families are trying to stop a 13-year-old girl under foster care from getting an abortion.

They say that she's too immature to decide whether or not she should have the baby.

The logic is diabolically cockeyed. If the girl isn't mature enough to make a sensible choice about her pregnancy, how can she possibly be mature enough to care for a newborn infant?

An even better question for the extremists at DCF is this: How can any 13-year-old child, from any background, be ready for motherhood?

The girl is publicly known only as L.G., and her life so far hasn't been a picnic. According to records, her parents lost custody of her years ago, and she has been raised under state care.

The girl was residing in a group home in St. Petersburg when she became pregnant 14 weeks ago. She got the news during a medical examination.

Her attorneys say L.G. immediately told her DCF caseworker "that she wished to terminate the pregnancy."

The procedure had been scheduled for last Tuesday, but then the morality police from Tallahassee arrived. That very morning, DCF lawyers filed an emergency motion with Palm Beach Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez. He signed a temporary order blocking the abortion and ordered a competency examination for L.G.

She is represented by lawyers from Palm Beach Legal Aid and the American Civil Liberties Union. They say that L.G. has never been found to be incompetent, or institutionalized for mental problems.

They say she should be allowed to make up her own mind about the pregnancy. The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that the state constitution offers a shield of privacy in such cases.

DCF insists that it's forbidden by law to let any person under its supervision undergo an abortion or sterilization procedure. Apparently this is to ensure that the agency will never run out of clients.

Forcing children in state custody to have babies against their will guarantees that there will be a whole new generation of abused, abandoned and neglected kids for taxpayers to support. It's quite a clever plan.

Unfortunately, DCF can't keep up with the thousands of cases that it's already got - cases such as L.G.'s.

In a way, she's one of the lucky ones; she only got pregnant. Others in state care have been tortured, raped, killed or, in the case of Rilya Wilson, vaporized into thin air.

With nightmare stories leaking out every few weeks, one would think that DCF had its hands full. Wrong.

The zealots picked by Gov. Jeb Bush to run the agency are never too busy to play politics with somebody's private agony. The Terri Schiavo case was the most recent debacle, but there have been others.

Two years ago, DCF fought to block a severely retarded Orlando woman from having an abortion. In that case, the agency litigated for so many months that the operation could not be safely performed. The woman gave birth, and the infant was put up for adoption.

Such ruthless intrusion into the most private matters is a trademark of the new Republican right, which seldom wastes an opportunity to whip the pro-life crowd into a tizzy. It will likely happen again with L.G's case.

With the governor's political image in mind, DCF carefully tries to mask its meddling as the act of a caring and concerned overseer. In fact the driving but unspoken philosophy behind most of the new abortion restrictions is punitive.

You got knocked up, kid. That's what you get for fooling around.

Now everybody but you gets to decide your future.

That's basically what the state of Florida is telling L.G.

We know what's best for you, kid. You're going to carry this baby for the next six months, and we don't care whether you want it or not. We don't care whether you're old enough, responsible enough, sober enough, stable enough or financially secure enough.

You can give it up for adoption, or you can keep it. If you turn out to be a lousy mom, we'll simply take it away and stick it in a foster home, just like we did to you.

A spokeswoman for DCF Secretary Luci Hadi said the agency is doing "what we believe is in the best interest of the child." Sure. If you happen to believe that unplanned pregnancy is a real character-builder for teenage girls.

Don't be surprised if DCF uses the same cold-blooded tactics against L.G. as it did against the retarded woman in Orlando - dragging the case out in court until it's too late for a safe abortion.

If someone put your 13-year-old daughter through that kind of cruelty, you'd know exactly what to call it:

Child abuse.
Carl Hiaasen writes for The Miami Herald.