12-Year-Old Girl Has Abortion

Prosecutors say they will wait for a 12-year-old girl allegedly impregnated by her 17-year-old brother to recover from an abortion before seeking to bring charges against him.

The girl had a late-term abortion in Kansas within the past week.

Macomb County assistant prosecutor Theresa Tobin said she expects to file first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges within the next few weeks. First-degree criminal sexual conduct is a felony punishable with up to life in prison.

But Prosecutor Carl Marlinga said his office would be willing to pursue a lesser sentence if the teen-ager obtains psychological treatment.

Assistant prosecutor Jennifer Faunce has said that the siblings said they had intercourse once. The family lives in a two-bedroom apartment, where the girl and her brother share a room.

A conviction on first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge could mean that the brother would be deported, said Richard Kulics, an attorney with the Immigration Law Center in Birmingham.

If the brother is convicted on the first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge, the court likely would have a hearing to determine whether he is to be deported immediately or whether he should serve his term first, Kulics said.

In most cases, he said, the court decides the convict should serve the sentence in the United States and then be deported.

Tomayko on Friday said the girl has had the abortion.

"She did have it. She's doing very well," Tomayko said. "There were no complications, which was a big relief to the family, and a big relief to me."

Tomayko would not say when the abortion was performed.

The girl was about 29 weeks pregnant at the time of the abortion. Abortion is illegal in Michigan after the 24th week unless the girl's or woman's life is endangered. A judge last week cleared the way for her parents to take her out of state to get an abortion.

Tomayko said the family traveled 1,100 miles to a clinic in Kansas, where late-term abortions are legal under certain circumstances. After an evaluation by Dr. George Tiller, the operator of Women's Health Care Services in Wichita, Kan., the girl had the abortion.

Tomayko said she advised the family to take some time to rest.

"Obviously, they've been through a major ordeal, and it's been very draining on them," she said. "I hope that people will give this family the respect and privacy and allow them to begin healing as much as they can."

After resting, the parents will need to go through other issues, Ms. Tomayko said.

"They still have to deal with their son, and they're concerned about him. They still love him, and they love their daughter," she said.

Anti-abortion activists staked out Tiller's clinic after learning July 24 that a Macomb County judge had returned the girl to her parents' custody and dropped her order requiring that they not leave Michigan.

But th girl arrived at the clinic outside the view of protesters, reporters and others, Tomayko said. "She wasn't harassed at all."

A doctor determined July 6 that the girl was 27 weeks pregnant. The doctor referred her to Detroit's Hutzel Hospital, where physicians referred her to Tiller's Kansas clinic.

The Macomb County Prosecutor's Office then intervened, persuading Probate Judge Pamela Gilbert O'Sullivan to make the girl a ward of the court and order that the family stay in Michigan until the girl had a psychiatric examination. That order was issued July 17 and was in effect for a week.

State regulators in Kansas, meanwhile, have begun investigating whether Tiller has violated a law restricting late-term abortions that took effect July 1. Tiller, who was shot in the arm by a protester in 1993 and whose clinic was bombed in 1986, has filed suit to try to have the law overturned. That case is pending before the Kansas Supreme Court.

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