In a case that garnered national headlines, the parents of a pregnant 16-year-old girl have told a Texas judge that they will not use physical force or psychological coercion to try to compel their daughter to abort. The teenager, from Hockley, Texas, had sued her parents when, she alleged, they had threatened "to make her life miserable" unless she had the abortion.
The girl, who is ten weeks pregnant, was not named. The baby's father is Evan Madison. The parents did not talk with reporters after Monday's settlement but had denied the allegations.
"She wanted to have this child without coercion and she got that," Stephen Casey, one of the teen's attorneys, told the Houston Chronicle. "We're glad that our client recognized that her unborn child had a right to live, and she wanted to protect that."
The parents also agreed "to pay half of the hospital bill if the girl has not married when the baby is delivered and let her use her car to go to school and work," according to the Chronicle's Brian Rogers. The young man, also 16, told reporters he intended to marry his girlfriend.
"There were times when she was in tears," Madison told reporters about the coercion and the decision to file a lawsuit. "It was hard on her and me."
Madison told CNN's Piers Morgan last night that ""We were always determined to have the baby" and never considered an abortion.
It was Madison's mother who first contacted lawyers who then reached out to the girl and offered their services free of charge.
As reported previously in NRL News Today, the lawsuit alleged that the girl's mother threatened to "slip (the teen) an abortion pill." CNN noted that the mother allegedly "took her daughter's phone and car and kept her home from school to punish her for choosing not to abort her fetus. The mother told the teen that she was 'making the biggest mistake of her life' by choosing to have the child and that the mother herself had undergone numerous abortions, so her daughter should, too," according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit added that the parents told their daughter she could "continue to live in misery" in their home or she could "have the abortion and tell everyone it was a miscarriage."
Source: National Right to Life
