Subscribe
RSS
Mobile
BOSTON (AP) - A retired Massachusetts judge is defending her decision to order a mentally ill woman to have an abortion and be sterilized against her wishes.
Christina Harms is also criticizing Boston University for withdrawing a job offer after her ruling sparked controversy and was overturned by the state Appeals Court.
Harms, who retired last month, defended her ruling in a letter she sent Monday to other Massachusetts family court judges, saying she believed the schizophrenic woman would have chosen to have an abortion if she had been mentally competent. The letter was first reported by The Boston Globe.
Harms says BU withdrew a job offer soon after her ruling became public.
BU says Harms was not the appropriate candidate for a job that required interaction with students, alumni and the judiciary.
February 21, 2012 @ 4:22 pm
Glad she has retired as a judge. Of course, Adolph’s judges would have gone a step further, and exterminated the schizophrenic. Now, hopefully, she will retire from the planet. Good for BU.
February 21, 2012 @ 4:26 pm
Good on Boston University for not hiring this evil woman. It still amazes me that people like this can be elevated to positions of such power like the bench.
February 21, 2012 @ 4:52 pm
Excuse me but no judge has the right to determine any of this. Let her be eviscerated before she plans anyone else should be. Abortion no, but if one chooses sterility, fine. Egads! we are getting judges with no background, no morals, on drugs, homos and lesbos, no experience being appointed right and left. We need to stop this idiocy. Get rid of them all this year by voting them out with this administration, or force them to resign NOW!
February 21, 2012 @ 7:20 pm
I agree that the judge should not have been able to force the abortion. If the woman was so incompetent, a conservator should have been appointed to make such medical decisions — although by law, she almost certainly had an attorney to protect her rights and wishes much as do minor children when needed. We have no way to know whether any of these decisions were correct aside from that one. We are quite rightly not privy to the woman’s personal mental health or other medical information.
Sterilization of someone unable to make rational decisions for herself might not have been such a bad plan — it would at least prevent additional need for abortions.
Nothing in this article lets us make evaluations of her sexuality, her background, or her experience. We know only that her moral framework allows abortion as an option. Beyond that one issue, her morality is also unknown. What her sexuality has to do with any of the other mentioned factors is not clear. Lesbians and gays are exactly as ethical and moral as anybody else — no more, and no less, and in almost the same percentages.
The use of the word “eviscerated” is clearly just for shock value. Even if a hysterectomy was performed, as opposed to tying her tubes, that is FAR from having all of her abdominal organs ripped out. News flash! Lots of women have them for health reasons. Someone who is likely to harm herself and/or her child either before or after birth has no business being a birth-mother more than once.
February 21, 2012 @ 8:33 pm
Is schizophrenia a hereditary condition? I doubt it. I will stand by my term paper, written 50 years ago, ‘Freudian Psychoanalysis, Science or Pseudoscience’. The study of mental health is far from being an ‘exact’ science, and while extreme abberrant behavior is usually fairly easy to recognize; the cause, cure and treatment is usually debatable.
Far too many times, a physical impairment is diagnosed as a mental disorder, and people are falsely incarcerated. Far too often incarceration occurs due to fraudulent claims by greedy family members.
But then there are the actions of this retired judge. Where in law does a judge have the power to physically abuse an individual. Many decry the death penalty, the extreme instance of abuse. But it is a penalty that brings forth excruciating review by several tiers of the judicial system, as well as by governors and presidents.
There are, and well should be, limits to judicial powers. Would this judge, or any judge for that matter, order a ‘tummy tuck’ for an obese person?