Picture this:

You and your family have made a decision that goes against the moral consensus of the community you live in. When word of your decision gets out, you are verbally harassed by your fanatic neighbors. The police arrest a member of your family, a judge forbids you from carrying out your decision, and you eventually flee the state.

This scenario sounds like something that might happen in China or a military dictatorship somewhere, but it didn’t. It happened just down the road on Highway 30, in Blair, Neb.

At a time when our political leaders are allegedly fighting against government intrusion into our lives, the government stampeded like a pack of elephants into the lives of a Nebraska family, and trampled their rights in the process.

It all began when a 15-year-old girl, a freshman at Blair High School, became pregnant, with some help from her 16-year-old boyfriend, Heath Mayfield. The couple finally confirmed the pregnancy with a home test in the fifth month.

Two days later, the girl told Mayfield that she had scheduled an appointment for abortion counseling. Distraught, Mayfield showed up at the girl’s house within 48 hours, along with his parents and a group of friends, and a verbal battle between the the two families ensued on the front lawn.

Mayfield’s family claims he went to beg for the life of his unborn child. The girl’s family claims they were screamed at and called “baby killers.”

The girl’s family went to stay with a nearby relative, and Mayfield’s parents went to bail him out of jail after he was arrested for assaulting a police officer.

This is the point where local police and the courts stepped in. Not to restore order to the town of 7,250, or to protect the unpopular, yet legal decisions of the girl’s family. They stepped in to enforce the moral position of the Blair community, which is that abortion is wrong.

The Mayfields’ mother went to a local physician’s assistant, James Jordan, and obtained a letter stating that, “any elective abortion could potentially cause medical and emotional damage to the mother at any stage of pregnancy.”

The letter, which was co-signed by Dr. K.C. Bagby, also stated that an abortion in the 23rd week of pregnancy could be harmful or fatal to the mother. Curiously, Jordan and Bagby managed to obtain all this information without ever examining the girl in question.

But the letter was good enough for the local police and Washington County attorney John E. Samson. The police went to the home where the girl and her family were staying and took her into custody, placing her in a foster home outside of Blair.

The police report about the incident states that the police took the girl into custody, “because of the health risk to Mary [a pseudonym] if an abortion was performed at this stage and due to the fact that an abortion was scheduled.”

This “health risk” facade is a thin one. I eat too much butter, but so far the police haven’t busted into my apartment and dragged me off to a foster home to force me to switch to margarine.

The petition Samson presented in juvenile court is more telling about the real reasons behind the action of the police. It charged the girl’s parents with, “neglect or refuse to provide care necessary for the health, morals, or well being,” of their daughter.

The term, “morals” is the key word in that charge. In the eyes of the community, and in turn, the local officials, parents who would permit their child to have an abortion have a lack of morals. Of course, the petition made no mention of the morals of Heath Mayfield, who had fathered a child out of wedlock at age 16.

The fact that the morals of a family differs from those of their community does not mean that the family doesn’t have morals.

The final chapter of this story has yet to be written. After a judge ruled that the girl couldn’t have an abortion, she gave birth to a baby girl on Dec. 7, 1994. After signs went up around town branding the family “murderers,” and intimidation that made the girl afraid to leave her house, the family moved to Iowa.

They are now suing Mayfield’s parents, various county and police officials and the writers of the infamous letter. The case will be heard in federal court in Lincoln, Neb., possibly by the end of the year.

On the surface, this appears to be an issue about abortion, but it isn’t. The issue is government intrusion into our lives. Abortion, whether it is right or wrong, is legal. This incident is an example of vigilantism, of mob rule. It has no place in our society.

Working within the political system to change laws would have been the right way for the people of Blair to handle the situation. Inventing a new interpretation of the laws for their own convenience was the wrong way.

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Steven Martens is a junior in journalism mass communication from Cedar Rapids.