Involuntary Motherhood

In Denver last spring, when the 12-year-old daughter of his landlady-mistress stopped at his room to call him for dinner, John W. Brewer, 38, impulsively enticed the child to bed, raped her. Clapped into jail, John Brewer was last week convicted of this statutory offense, may spend the rest of his natural life behind bars. Nothing more might have been heard of this commonplace crime outside Denver, if its victim had not been left pregnant by John Brewer. The child's outraged mother took her daughter to Denver General Hospital, loudly pleaded for an abortion. That action raised questions of law, medical ethics and social customs which, by last week, had roused comment throughout the nation. Deputy Manager Bertram Barr Jaffa of Denver General Hospital forbade the abortion, a simple procedure in the early stage of the child's pregnancy, until the district attorney would guarantee that the abortionist would not be prosecuted for an operation which in Colorado is a crime. This the district attorney refused to guarantee, pointing out that doctors have the indisputable right to perform an abortion to preserve the life or health of a prospective mother. But Dr. Jaffa would take no chances. He and the district attorney threw the case into the reluctant lap of Denver's Juvenile Judge Stanley H. Johnson. Judge Johnson discreetly hired two impeccable Denver physicians to advise him. Last week Judge Johnson's medical advisers told him that the child, by now in the sixth month of pregnancy, was physically able to proceed with her involuntary motherhood. Social service workers reported that "the child mother wants to keep her baby because it will be like having a big wonderful doll to play with." So Judge Johnson also forbade the abortion. The tenor of most of the indignant comments on the Denver case, which rose from all sections of the nation, was that the abortion should have been performed, not perhaps for strictly physical reasons* but because of the emotional, mental and social damage motherhood of this kind may involve.

*In Tennessee last month an 11-year-old girl safely gave birth to a normal healthy baby (TIME, Sept. 24).

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