This story has been updated.
“A 10-year-old child abuse victim was forced to seek an abortion in Indiana after her home state of Ohio barred abortion following the Supreme Court decision to overturn of Roe v. Wade,” the Daily Mail, a U.K.-based tabloid, said in a story published on Friday, July 1, 2022 (read it here).
“A child abuse doctor in Ohio sought the help of … an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist” in Indiana to get the girl an abortion there, the Daily Mail said.
According to the Daily Mail, that happened because Ohio bans abortions after 6 weeks, and the girl was 6 weeks and 3 days pregnant, making her ineligible for an Ohio abortion in Ohio. The tabloid noted that Indiana’s abortion laws will become more restrictive later this month, and this case barely got in under the wire there.
No other details about the child’s pregnancy were provided, but articles I found on the internet say it’s possible for a 10-year-old girl to conceive, although a minimum age of 12 to 13 years is more typical. (Ohio reported 52 abortions involving girls 14 and under in 2020; see story here.)
This article quoted a St. Louis ob-gyn professor, in reference to a Colombia case, as saying, “No 10-year-old anywhere in the world should be having a baby,” because of the physical trauma that can occur, which is detailed in that article
Meanwhile, Indiana is receiving an influx of women from Ohio and Kentucky seeking abortions, the Daily Mail story says.
Conservatives, often driven by religious beliefs, have put fetuses on a pedestal to the exclusion of women’s welfare by passing ideology-driven laws that in some cases outlaw all abortions, even for rape and incest. They seem not to care about the damage that making a woman raise a rapist’s child does to her, which can include forcing her to have a lifetime of continuing interactions with the rapist. Many of these zealots even oppose abortions necessary to save the mother’s life.
Cases like this one obviously are very rare, and exceptional, so why don’t they make exceptions for them? But Republicans seem hellbent on imposing rigid prohibitions on the general public, based on their personal beliefs, regardless of individual circumstances. These laws smack of using the power of government to impose their religious beliefs on strangers who don’t share their beliefs. And they’re unwilling to acknowledge the harm this causes.
For example, South Dakota’s GOP Gov. Kristi Noem, when asked if she would force a 10-year-old to have a baby, tried to change the subject by ranting about the “pervert” who impregnated her (which kinda goes without saying, doesn’t it?). Pressed further by the reporter, she skirted the subject and refused to answer. Watch the video of that exchange here.
Other Republicans took a different tack; they disputed the story, expressing doubts the girl exists and the incident occurred; see that story here.
But this dodge blew up in their faces when the Columbus Dispatch broke the news on Wednesday, July 13, 2022, that a suspect, Gerson Fuentes (photo, right), 27, has been arrested and has confessed to raping the girl; read that story here.