Fake ID card at center of abortion clinic suit [View All]

[PfcHammer]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2501514

Fake ID card at center of abortion clinic suit

By RON NISSIMOV
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Cherise Mosley Hughes wept Monday as she told jurors that she used a fake ID to get an abortion while she was a minor because she didn't want to break the heart of her father, a Pentecostal minister.

Hughes, now 21, and her father, Fredrick Mosley, are suing Aaron Family Planning Clinic of southwest Houston and Dr. Douglas A. Karpen for accepting the fake identification card and performing the abortion in August 2000 without notifying Mosley.

The doctor and clinic are accused of violating Texas' 1999 parental notification law requiring that minors' parents be notified 48 hours before an abortion.

Hughes and Mosley contend that clinic workers would have realized Hughes was a minor if they had questioned her about the ID, which states that it is not a government document. They testified that if this had been done, the abortion would not have been performed because Mosley would have reassured his daughter that he loved her and would have advised her to keep the baby.

"He would have shown me how to take care of the child," Hughes said while being questioned by her lawyer, Jared Woodfill. "I think about the baby every day. My (other two children) could have had another brother or sister; I don't even know which it was."

She and her father are seeking unspecified damages.

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