DECISION REVERSED
Sterilisation Order (N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) SANTA BARBARA, (California), June 9. A court order requiring a young mother to undergo sterilisation or go to gaol was reversed today in a sharply worded decision that was hailed as “an important legal precedent.” A superior court judge, Mr C. Douglas Smith, termed the sterilisation ruling “arbitrary and outside the law,” adding "judges may not ignore a law simply because they do not like it or believe in it” The sterilisation order had been made on March 13 by a municipal court judge, Mr Frank P. Kearney, in a case involving Mrs Nancy Hernandez, a' 21-year-old mother of two. The judge observed that she already had given birth to one illegitimate child, might have more, was living “a dissolute life” with a narcotics addict and was “an unfit mother.”
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31084, 13 June 1966, Page 13
Word Count
138DECISION REVERSED Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31084, 13 June 1966, Page 13
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