Australia: Abortion ordered for 12-year-old girl

Michael McKenna
September 27, 2008

DOCTORS have been ordered to perform an abortion on a 12-year-old Queensland girl who is 18 weeks pregnant after a suspected rape.

In a landmark decision, Supreme Court judge Margaret Wilson ordered the termination after accepting medical advice that the continuation of the pregnancy posed serious dangers to the mental health and wellbeing of the girl, whose intellectual age was deemed by an obstetrician to be that of a six-year-old.

Queensland Health last night declined to comment on whether the abortion - using the labour-inducing drug misoprostol - had already been performed after the secret hearing last week. the rest