The eternal question surrounding abortion has reared its ugly head once again in the court system: Does a fetus ever have rights comparable to those of the woman carrying it?

As always, there are no simple answers to that question, but in this most recent case involving a 22-year-old woman known to the courts only by her initials, J.D.S., clear implications result as to how it got this far from an examination of the circumstances.

J.D.S. cannot speak, can barely walk and suffers from severe mental retardation, autism and seizure disorder. She was abandoned as a young girl and has since lived in a state-licensed Orlando, Fla. group home where, as a result of rape, is now in her sixth month of pregnancy.

J.D.S. has no guardian with the legal power to make critical decisions on her behalf since she turned 18, when all Florida residents are considered legally able to care for themselves, even if they have multiple disabilities and have been under the supervision of the Florida Department of Children & Families their entire lives.

DCF failed to file a petition of incompetency for her when she turned 18; therefore, they failed to protect her from this sort of controversial situation in the first place. Basically, she is still considered legally competent because no one has bothered to declare her otherwise.

Had J.D.S. had a court hearing and been declared incompetent, she would have been appointed a legal guardian who would have visited her regularly and been directly responsible for helping her with critical life decisions, such as in this case the continuation or abortion of a pregnancy caused by rape.

Had she been declared competent, she could seek prenatal care, counseling or an abortion on her own.

But instead, J.D.S. came to be at the mercy of the decision of Judge Lawrence Kirkwood on Monday. He ruled she is legally incapacitated and unable to make decisions for herself. He thereby appointed her a guardian who said in a June 2 Associated Press article that, after seeking medical advice, she wouldn’t have a problem deciding to terminate the pregnancy or let the young woman carry the fetus to term.

The main reason this case became the center of a raging abortion debate was because Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wanted to appoint a guardian for the fetus as well as for the mother, which besides being illegal, is also nonsensical.

Two professional guardians who had stepped forward before Monday to take on her case first requested to be named guardian for the fetus, and were rightly denied by Judge Kirkwood. If Gov. Bush and these guardians truly had the best interests of J.D.S. at heart, wouldn’t they all realize that it is in the best interests of both the mother and the fetus to make sure the mother is even capable of carrying out a pregnancy?

There are a few obvious factors that doctors say make carrying out a pregnancy “high risk” for the woman, like the effects of her cerebral palsy, autism and seizure disorder. The fetus may also be harmed by the “psychotropic medications” the woman is on to control her symptoms.

And after all, it is solely her protection and well-being that should be sought. She was the one who was raped, and even worse, her court-appointed attorney Rod Taylor says in the AP article that “she isn’t aware that she is pregnant.”

The appointing of either of those guardians to this case would have most likely resulted in J.D.S. carrying the child to term regardless of if it is detrimental to either her health or the health of the fetus, and also regardless of how the woman herself feels about the pregnancy. It was crucial that an unbiased, objective guardian be appointed to make decisions on her behalf.

Thank goodness for a rational judge on the bench. No thanks to the Bushs of this world, a woman’s right to do what is best for herself has been upheld for the time being.

But seeing as how J.D.S. is approaching her third trimester, an argument for abortion may turn out to be moot. It may be too late to safely perform an abortion, or to even justify performing one at all.

This case has been exploited and politicized to the point that this woman’s needs have been forgotten and overshadowed. There may be no possible way now to help this woman obtain the services she desires, whatever they may be. It will be even more impossible to remedy the wrongs she has encountered at the hands of those who were supposed to help her.

So why should the fight continue to let this woman maintain relative control of her reproductive system? There is still time to prevent this from happening to anyone else.