The Florida judge, Jared Smith, who denied a teenager an abortion because of her grades in school,was voted out of office last August. Court documents listed her as 17-year-old Jane Doe 22B. She was 11 weeks pregnant at the time of her petition to the Court in light of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which left abortion decisions up to the states. She told the court she wasn’t ready to have a baby, didn’t have a job and that the father of the baby wasn’t able to help her.
Court documents also stated Jane Doe was parentless, without a support system. Jane Doe did the only thing she could legally do, She asked Jared Smith to grant her the right to have an abortion without the consent of a parent or guardian, neither of which she had. Florida is one of 36 states requiring parental consent for a minor to have an abortion. In Florida, there’s a process called judicial bypass where minors can petition the court for an abortion without parental consent. Under Florida law, a judge can waive parental consent if it finds by “clear and convincing evidence” that the minor is “sufficiently mature” to decide to have an abortion. In considering those requests, judges are required to assess factors like the minor’s age, overall intelligence and emotional stability. Judge Jared Smith denied her as “not being mature” enough to decide about an abortion because she had “B” grades in school.
The people of Florida were outraged that she was denied an abortion on the basis of her grades and voted Jared Smith out of office. However, the Florida Man of all Florida Men, Govenor Ron Desantis, has given Jared Smith a promotion by appointing Jared Smith to fill one of the vacancies on the newly created 6th District Court of Appeals Tuesday. Smith further embarassed himself and the courts of our nation while campaigning after his wife said that Smith’s opponent, a Jewish woman named Nancy Jacobs, “needs Jesus,” an obvious ant-semetic jab in a time where anti-semetism is at rise. Jared Smith lost the election 52-48, however, on January 1, he will be back in an even higher seat of judicial power, free to use partisan beliefs and Christian Nationalism to effect rulings on those subservient to his reign.
