Court Opinion

ID: 9456237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:46:32.081868+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:53.872632
License: Public Domain

MacKINNON, Circuit Judge:
I concur in remanding the ease to the District Court for hearing and reiterate my position that mental health involvement is a legal basis for abortion under the D.C. General Hospital Regulations and D.C.Code § 22-201 and that hospital practices must recognize this. However, while judges of the Court of Appeals and the lawyers involved may be fully aware of the status and meaning of the court’s decisions in the District of Columbia, I am unwilling to presume that Dr. Ward was similarly knowledgeable about the legal technicalities involved. Doctors live in an entirely different world far removed from the field of lawyers and they are not ordinarily familiar with the ins and outs of litigation. I find Dr. Ward’s lack of familiarity with class actions to be not unusual in lay personnel. They are a relatively unusual form of legal action.
A cardinal point for me in this case is that, as I read the affidavits, Lee Davis, the neighbor who called about the possibility for an abortion for Mary Doe II did not contend that Mary Doe II was suffering from any mental disease, the affidavit of Mary Doe’s mother did not so contend, and no such claim is made here now. Thus, as I read the moving papers, movants are advancing the claim that every person who contacts D.C. General Hospital about an abortion must be informed and processed to see if there is not some possible way that an abortion could be justified on mental health grounds, whether such claim is advanced for the patient or not. That seems to me to be beating the mental health grounds to death and to be extremely unreasonable. I surmise it would also be extremely costly and that the time of psychiatrists could more appropriately be devoted to cases where their services appear to be needed. I do not believe that mental disease is the only ground or that mental health grounds are presumed to exist in every abortion request, and I do not believe that the hospital should be held in contempt because they fail to process every case on mental health grounds. To do so, is to overemphasize mental health grounds and this may not assist the *435patient. The case of Mary Doe II seems to be a case in point. Actually counsel for Mary Doe II, in attempting to support her case on questionable mental health grounds since no such grounds were previously claimed, have overlooked the obvious fact that Mary Doe II is 14 years of age and clearly entitled to an abortion under the hospital regulations which authorize same “In cases of confirmed rape. * * * ” (D.C. General Hospital Regulations of January 27, 1970, see Mary Doe v. General Hospital, 140 U.S.App.D.C. -, -, 434 F.2d 423, 427 (1970). In the District of Columbia any carnal knowledge of a female child under sixteen years of age is rape and punishable by imprisonment for not more than thirty years, and the jury may add “with the death penalty,” D.C. Code §§ 22-2801. A child of such tender years is considered incapable of consenting and the pregnancy confirms the rape. Hence, she had a clear right to an abortion under the hospital regulations.
I do not find it any more unusual for Dr. Ward to not be entirely familiar with the intricacies of the Mary Doe decision than to find Mary Doe’s attorneys unfamiliar with the D.C.Code and hospital regulations on rape, even though the hospital regulations were set out in extenso in the Mary Doe I decision where the present lawyers for Mary Doe II were counsel. People, including doctors and lawyers do many times make, what may appear to others to be, obvious mistakes.
There is one further argument advanced in appellant’s brief that I feel necessitates comment. Appellants contend, in effect, that Doctor Ward intentionally refused to process Mary Doe II on mental health grounds and suggest this may have been on grounds of “philosophy.” The brief then states:
“Surely, if any attorney informed the Court that he refused to accept an assigned criminal case because of his ‘philosophy’ or because of other immaterial reasons, the attorney would be subject to discipline. Dr. Ward has done the same thing.”
Rejecting the other immaterial (?) reasons as not being in point here, so far as “philosophy” is concerned, if that includes having his conscience or morals being personally revolted by the assignment, I do not agree that any lawyer or doctor would be subject to any discipline by any person for refusal to accept a professional assignment with such involvements. I consider that any doctor would have a perfect right and an obligation to refuse to perform an abortion on what he personally considered to be specious mental health grounds, just as any lawyer could refusé to accept the defense of a criminal case that might personally be revolting to him or require him, for example, to aid or support by his conduct or silence a specious or untruthful defense. We have not yet, I hope, reached the point where lawyers and doctors are automatons of the state.
Concluding, I agree that the case should be remanded because the Court of Appeals is ill suited to act as a trial court, but I see no merit to the claim of contempt since Mary Doe II is not alleged to be within the class of persons suffering from mental disease and it would be extremely unreasonable to require every abortion request to be processed by the hospital on mental health grounds.