October 31, 2005 - Her birthday is Halloween. She just turned 15. She is an eighth grader. She is pregnant. The father is 19 and functions at the intellectual level of an 8 year old. When her mother discovered that the girl is pregnant she arranged for the boy to move in with them. She knew that her 14 year old daughter and the 19 year old fourth grader were “doing it”. Her father knew that his daughter was pregnant and that the 19 year old was the father. Until the police became involved the father did not believe that the boy sleeping on the floor of his daughter’s bedroom was having sex with her. Given this set of facts – taken from life in the almost exclusively Caucasian rural Midwest – should the law compel this child to carry the pregnancy to term and deliver a baby next May? The converse of that question is this: should the law compel the child to abort the fetus?

If your answer to the first question is yes, the law should demand that the 15 year old carry the pregnancy to term how then do you provide for the child she is going to bear? How will you insure that the child to be will have a quality of life that you can call adequate? How do you deal with the fact that neither prospective parent is endowed with the ability to care for this infant? Is it your answer that the State must take custody of the child and compel an adoption of the infant? Are you willing to take the risk as an adoptive parent that the infant will not inherit its parent’s genetic disabilities? Are you willing, as a member of an enlightened society, to pay the taxes necessary to provide the child with a minimum quality of life and opportunity at public expense; to provide it with quality health care; to insure it educational resources to meet its special needs?

If, on the other hand you answer the second question in the affirmative, where do you draw the line between those children that the State should permit be born and those who will be permitted to enter into life? Does society have the authority to decide who may and who may not reproduce? Just where do you draw the line?

Lest you believe that the scenario that I posited in the first paragraph is an exaggerated hypothetical horror story constructed just to pose those questions let me assure you that it is precise factual setting of a case assigned to me this Halloween morning. There is no reasonable solution to the legal questions; the social questions; or the moral questions posed by this case. It does illustrate what a morass we plunge into when we intrude government into the most intimate and personal of all decisions. That is why the proposition that the choice to carry a fetus to term belongs to the woman with the advice of her doctor and her clergyman. It does not belong to the government and she should not be compelled to consult her lawyer.

If Mr. Justice Alito proves to be the voice on the Supreme Court that tips the balance against Roe v. Wade then President Bush will have given us a real Trick or Treat this Halloween.