Word: heath
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pattern for young people dealing with this unwelcome event: first denial, then a creeping fear and perhaps a few fretful, secretive exchanges before the news finally comes out. In the case of "Mary Smith,'' a 15-year-old freshman at Blair High School, and her 16-year-old boyfriend Heath Mayfield, a junior varsity running back with a spanking-new Ford Mustang, the pregnancy was well into the fifth month before they finally confirmed it with a home-test...
That was Sept. 26, 1994. Two days later, Mary (whose parents requested a pseudonym to protect her) told Heath that she had made an appointment for abortion counseling. Within 48 hours, she was detained by police, placed in a foster home and brought before a judge who forbade the abortion...
...year later, her parents have filed a lawsuit against Heath's parents, various police officers and county officials, and a local physician and physician's assistant, charging trespass, false arrest and assault, among other things. The case, which will be heard in federal court in Lincoln, Nebraska, as early as the end of the year, has suddenly thrust Blair, a city of 7,250 that is so placid that mayoral candidates have run unopposed for the past 12 years, deep into the rancorous national debate over who has a right to influence a pregnant woman's decision...
...that emotional afternoon more than a year ago, Heath Mayfield recalls, "I told her she didn't have to do that, and she kept crying." Heath too was upset, and when his mother Cathy Tull discovered why, she got on the phone with Mary's mother and, as she says, "had words." She and her husband John Tull, a printshop owner, then followed Heath to the Smiths' front yard, where the two families battled it out before a gathering audience of passersby. The Tulls claim that Heath was on his knees begging for the life of the baby in front...
Every Tuesday and Wednesday night, the baby is brought into Blair for a court-sanctioned visit with her father. He pays $50 a month in child support, but the Smiths must use $40 of that to pay their share of the court-appointed supervisor's $10-an-hour fee. Heath says he has returned his new Mustang so he can afford the payments...