(LifeSiteNews) — A teenage mother in Florida was not forced to go through with an unwanted abortion orchestrated by a family member, thanks to the efforts of Liberty Counsel (LC).
LC reported July 17 that the girl and her boyfriend, who remain anonymous, planned to choose life for their baby girl, but a relative had other ideas. Because most abortions are illegal under Florida’s heartbeat law, the relative attempted to coerce the teen mother into traveling to radically pro-abortion Illinois, going so far as to secure travel and hotel arrangements with financial assistance from the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF), which allegedly continued cooperating even after being told that the abortion would be against the mother’s will.
The boyfriend reached out to LC for help in November, and LC quickly coordinated with the Florida Attorney General’s Office to present the mother’s family with a demand letter warning them that it was a federal crime under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act to kill a preborn baby against the wishes of her mother.
The family backed down, and the baby girl has since been born healthy and safe.
“Right before the July 4, 2026, weekend, Liberty Counsel’s teen client gave birth to her beautiful daughter,” said LC founder and chairman Mat Staver. “We celebrate this baby girl who has the unalienable right to life, and we commend this baby’s young parents who courageously chose life amidst intense pressure to kill the unborn baby.”
“Regardless of the circumstances, a pregnant minor possesses the same constitutional rights as any mother to care for her unborn child. Liberty Counsel’s rapid response saved an unborn life that was days away from being killed, and foiled the Chicago Abortion Fund from aiding and paying for a coerced out-of-state abortion meant to evade Florida’s pro-life laws,” Staver continued. “Coercing minor girls across state lines against their wishes into forced abortions is illegal and reprehensible. Death trafficking has no place in society.”
Despite the abortion lobby’s framing of abortion as a matter of “choice,” it has long turned a blind eye to abortion coercion. Live Action’s “Aiding Abusers” series draws on news reports, eyewitness testimony, and undercover video to expose Planned Parenthood employees’ willingness to offer abortions to girls as young as 12 without reporting signs of statutory or forcible rape to law enforcement. This enables the men who brought the girls in for appointments to continue abusing them.
With the rise of mail-order abortion pills, it has become easier than ever for abusers to try to eliminate unwanted children over the objections of their mothers.
In 2023, the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute released a study that interviewed 1,000 American women and found that 61 percent of women who undergo abortions do so due to pressure from “male partners, family members, other persons, financial concerns, and other circumstances.” In June, LifeSiteNews’s Jonathon Van Maren highlighted several recent and ongoing cases, including Illinois resident Emerson Evan, who was just sentenced to seven years for “voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child.”
“Forcing a woman to have an abortion, including a minor, is illegal in all 50 states of the United States of America,” according to the Justice Foundation’s Center Against Forced Abortions, which offers a variety of information resources to help those who are being pressured into killing their babies.
