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One is left speechless in the face of a 17-year-old girl's decision to pay a stranger to repeatedly punch her in the stomach in order to terminate her late-term pregnancy.
What kind of family environment spawns that kind of monstrous decision-making?
Yesterday, the Utah Supreme Court had to decide the technical legal question of whether the teen mother's alleged actions amounted to solicitation to commit murder or somehow could be shoehorned into a woman's right to seek an abortion.
The case involves J.M.S. of Vernal, Utah. According to the state, in 2009, the seventeen-year-old found herself with an unwanted pregnancy. She went to an abortion clinic to solve her problem, but learned that her pregnancy was too far advanced and that she was no longer eligible for the procedure under state law.
With that news, J.M.S. figured she was in real trouble. No, J.M.S. wasn't thinking long-term about the harsh reality of being an unwed teen mother. According to the state, what was really top most on J.M.S.'s mind was the fact that her boyfriend had told her he would have nothing to do...