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A teenage boy is suing an abortion clinic for terminating his girlfriend's pregnancy without his consent, according to reports.

A judge has allowed Ryan Magers, 19, to sue on behalf of the foetus in what his lawyer claimed is one of the first cases of its kind.

"Baby Roe" is named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit which Magers took out against the Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives.

His now ex-girlfriend got a medicated abortion against his wishes at the clinic in February 2017 when she was six weeks pregnant, according to legal papers filed in the case, Fox News reported.

The case, involving a girl who reports say was 16 when she became pregnant to Magers, then aged 19 and unemployed, has alarmed pro-choice campaigners.

The case is set to become a flash-point in the controversial abortion issue that continues to dominate political debate in the United States.

(Image: Getty Images)

Pro-choice activists fear a conservative majority on the US Supreme Court could see the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that enshrined women's access to abortion struck down.

Fox reported that Magers was able to file the lawsuit because voters in Alabama, a conservative state, had passed an amendment to its constitution to recognise the personhood of a foetus months earlier.

"Baby Roe’s innocent life was taken by the profiteering of the Alabama Women’s Center and while no court will be able to bring Baby Roe back to life, we will seek the fullest extent of justice on behalf of Baby Roe and Baby Roe’s father," Attorney Brent Helms said of Magers' case in a statement reported by Fox.

He said the case was set to break legal ground, calling for "consistency" in Alabama: "Either we fully acknowledge the personhood of the unborn or we cherry pick which innocents we protect and which ones we trash for profit.”

The Washington Post reported that the girl was 16 when she became pregnant.

Speaking anonymously to the newspaper to protect his daughter's privacy, her father said the family is "distraught" over the lawsuit.

He claimed Magers was 19 and unemployed when they discovered she was pregnant, and the relationship has ended.



(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

"We had a long discussion over what she was going to do when she got pregnant. And we said we would support her either way," he told the Post.

"They weren’t married, and I felt legally it was her right to make that decision."

The lawsuit was reportedly filed by Personhood Alabama and praised by pro-life lobby groups, including the Personhood Alliance, as other Republican states look set to attempt to follow its suit.

However similar attempts to use the legal concept of identity for an embryo in the US courts have not been clear-cut, as the high profile case involving Modern Family star Sophia Vergara revealed.

The actress has been locked in a dragging legal battle for years with her ex Nick Loeb over two embryos the couple froze in case they needed them for fertility treatment in the future.



(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

She is remarried and wants the embryos destroyed, but Loeb, who has even named the cell clusters 'Emma' and 'Isabella', wants to keep them. The lawsuit has continued in Louisiana without resolution.

NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue called the latest lawsuit "scary" in a tweet on Tuesday, writing: "First under Alabama's new personhood law, asserting woman's rights third in line. Very scary case."

US media is reporting abortion rights groups are alarmed because it is the first case in the state naming an unborn foetus as a person in the lawsuit.

Activists view the moves as an attempt to recognise embryos and foetuses as separate from the women who carry them.

They fear the judge allowing Magers to name the foetus as a co-plaintiff in the suit for wrongful death will open the floodgates to similar cases.

Campaigners say it presents a worrying direction, after cases of the concept being used to accuse women of abuse or punish mothers who choose their own birth plans against doctors' advice emerged, the Post reported.

In one case, a mother lost custody of her child when she delivered her baby by vaginal birth instead of the C-section her doctors had insisted upon.

In others, pregnant woman who had miscarriages after drinking alcohol or took drugs - including prescription drugs - have been accused of child abuse.

The Alabama Women's Centre is reportedly preparing to fight the case, which it called "unprecedented", the Post said.