I had not planned to write anything more about the child who was raped in Ohio, became pregnant with the rapist’s semen, but had to go to Indiana for an abortion. But then someone wrote a comment here implying that the whole story sounded like fake news. As I showed in my original post, there have been many reports of children who were raped and impregnated. Some got abortions. Others did not.
I’m old-fashioned. I don’t think children should be raped. If they are, they should not bear a child. It’s monstrous. The rapist should be found and punished. In my limited view, those who want a 10-year-old child to have a baby are sadists.
In the Ohio case, Republicans jumped all over the story and called it fake news. It was not. The right showed themselves to be heartless, cruel fools.
Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times reports how the Right humiliated themselves in their eagerness to discredit the story and the child.
She writes:
Not long after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, an Indiana obstetrician and gynecologist named Caitlin Bernard told The Indianapolis Star about a call she’d gotten from a doctor in Ohio. The Ohio doctor had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. An Ohio law banning abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected — usually around the sixth week of pregnancy — had just gone into effect, so the girl needed to cross state lines for care. The report, being illustrative of the ghoulish impact of abortion prohibitions, went viral, and Joe Biden mentioned it in a speech.
The right, however, quickly convinced itself that the tale was dubious and probably false. The conservative website PJ Media claimed, last Friday, that the account had “many of the elements of a hoax.” On Monday, Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, went on Fox News to say that he knew of no police reports about a 10-year-old rape victim. “The more you learn about this, the more unbelievable it becomes,” said the host, Jesse Watters.
A Wall Street Journal editorial on Tuesday described the report as “fanciful,” noting that “no one has been able to identify the girl or where she lives,” as if that information should be public. “Hey, so did they catch the guy who raped the Ohio ten year old yet?” the National Review writer Michael Brendan Dougherty tweeted last week, seemingly sarcastically.
The answer to Dougherty’s question is now yes. Officials say that a 27-year-old named Gerson Fuentes was arrested on Tuesday and has confessed. The children’s services department in Columbus alerted the police about the rape in June. Rather than apologize to Caitlin Bernard for calling her a liar, many on the right have started attacking her for not reporting the rape herself, even though the police already knew about it by the time she saw the girl.
On Wednesday, Watters displayed a photograph of Bernard and said, “According to reporting from PJ Media, she has a history of failing to report child abuse cases.” Then Indiana’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, appeared on Watters’s show, describing Bernard as an “abortion activist acting as a doctor,” and announcing she was under investigation.
It looks like the only thing Bernard did wrong, though, is to embarrass Republicans. On Thursday afternoon, The Star reported that Bernard reported the abortion to the Indiana Department of Health and the Department of Child Services, as state law requires. In a statement, her lawyer said she’s considering legal action against Rokita and others who have “smeared” her.
This whole hideous episode has demonstrated the extent to which conservatives are unwilling to grapple with the reality of the abortion regime they are imposing on much of the country. There is nothing wrong with seeing a single-source news report and deciding you want to withhold judgment until more information emerges. But that’s not what happened here. Instead there was sneering incredulity, as if a raped 10-year-old being denied an abortion wasn’t an inevitable consequence of an abortion ban without a rape exception.
Surely right-wingers, who love to accuse their enemies of pedophilia, understand that children are raped in America. The Columbus Dispatch, which broke the news of Fuentes’s arrest, reported that there were 52 abortions performed on children 15 and under in Ohio in 2020, roughly one a week in just one state.
In countries that have banned abortion, there have been a number of high-profile cases of very young pregnant rape victims. In Nicaragua in 2003, feminist activists fought to help a 9-year-old obtain a therapeutic abortion. When it emerged that she’d been raped by her stepfather, the activists faced legal harassment over accusations that they’d helped cover up the crime.
Just this year, a judge in Brazil tried to block an abortion for an 11-year-old who had been raped. “Do you want to choose the baby’s name?” he asked her. “Would the baby’s father agree to give it up for adoption? Would you bear it a little longer?” Why would anyone think that similar laws won’t lead to similar results here?
It’s been especially maddening to see people on the right smugly insist that the girl in Ohio could have had a legal abortion in her state. In a New York Post column casting doubt on the story, the law professor Jonathan Turley wrote, “Ohio says abortions are allowed ‘to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman,’ which would certainly be the case for a 10-year-old.”
His certainty is entirely unearned. The Ohio law actually saysthat abortion is permitted only in cases of “medical emergency” requiring the “immediate performance or inducement of an abortion” in order to prevent death or irreversible bodily harm that “delay in the performance or inducement of the abortion would create.” This language is vague and open to interpretation. It’s obvious to me that a pregnant 10-year-old is an immediate medical emergency. But if you were an abortion provider in Ohio, would you stake your career, and perhaps your freedom, on prosecutors like Yost giving you the benefit of the doubt?
“If states write laws that are completely vague about what the requirements are, they can still have abortion on the books, but have an environment in which no physician is willing to provide it,” said the N.Y.U. law professor Melissa Murray.
Roe has been gone for less than three weeks, and the utterly predictable outcomes are already apparent. Today.com reportedon a woman in Arizona who learned at 21 weeks that her wanted pregnancy was unviable, but whose doctor is unable to induce an early delivery because of the Supreme Court’s decision. “I really can only describe it as feeling trapped,” she said.
As The Los Angeles Times reported, some patients are being denied methotrexate, a drug used to treat certain cancers and autoimmune conditions, because it’s an abortifacient. Medical professionals aren’t necessarily wrong to worry; according to the newspaper, “In Texas, dispensing methotrexate to someone who uses it to induce a miscarriage after 49 days of gestation is a felony.”
Abortions after about six weeks have been illegal in Texas since S.B. 8, the so-called abortion bounty law, took effect last year, and women have come forward to speak about the trauma they’ve had to endure. NPR reported on a woman named Anna whose water broke on her wedding day, when she was 19 weeks pregnant. The fetus had no chance of surviving, and Anna was at high risk of hemorrhaging or developing sepsis. But doctors said they couldn’t terminate the pregnancy until either the fetus’s heart stopped or her condition worsened. She ended up spending thousands of dollars to fly to Colorado for an abortion, sitting in the front row so she could reach the bathroom quickly in case she had to deliver.
If none of this is what anti-abortion lawmakers intended, nothing is stopping them from amending their laws. Ohio’s statute includes examples of medical emergencies in which abortion is permitted, including pre-eclampsia and prematurely ruptured membranes. If Republicans think “being a child rape victim” ought to be included as well, they should add it.
But they’re unlikely to, because the anti-abortion movement would object. On Thursday, James Bopp, general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, told Politico that under model legislation he’s written, the Ohio girl would have been forced to carry her pregnancy to term. “She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” he said.
This is, at least, honest. The fury directed at Caitlin Bernard suggests other conservatives aren’t as willing to admit what their laws do.
A 10-year-old having a baby would likely die in childbirth.
yup
“A 10-year-old having a baby would likely die in childbirth.”
That matters only if you value the life of the child-female-birther as much as the fetus.
From the perspective of that 10-year-old, even the best laws that allow efficient, humane abortion processes will be a horror. All the hoops she now has to jump through and the collateral damage venal lawmakers only add immeasurably, in ways that might will follow her for the rest of her life. Each ideological victory comes with countless damaged, tragic individuals.
To “pro-lifers,” that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. In May, Jean Schmidt said, if life hands you rape lemons, make rape lemonade.
The youngest girl to give birth was 5. It is possible. More than you think
Although under normal conditions the GOP would have made fools of themselves, it is unlikely they would retract the story when the truth was found leaving the perception that the original story was the truth.
However, when they learned an undocumented person was the perpetrator, they pivoted to a new story
We need to teach our kids to think beyond the confirmation bias so as adults they will question everything. Begin by eliminating the standardized test. Next, put debate coaches in charge of the curriculum.
People are being conned all the time as evidenced by the fly by night charters.
Jim Jordan confirms what I have always believed. Somewhere in this great country of ours, a village is missing their idiot.
Thinking beyond confirmation bias requires being open to information and sources that disagree with your beliefs and evaluating such sources/information for evidence, which is something that not just Republicans/conservatives struggle with, as evidenced by the resistance on this blog to anything other than the liberal establishment narrative as presented by CNN/NYT. Any dissenting opinions around here are prima facia evidence that the opinion-holder is a “Russian asset”, “Putin pawn” and/or “Trump troll”.
Hypocrite. Look in the mirror.
“…the resistance on this blog to anything other than the liberal establishment narrative as presented by CNN/NYT”
I think Diane Ravitch should ban you right now for your disgusting lie about her and this blog.
One thing Diane never does is lie. If she makes a mistakes, she corrects it.
You, on the other hand, double down on your lies. Do you still defend Putin as going after “Ukraine Nazis” as he targets Ukraine civilians? Did you admit you were wrong, or did you pivot to a new talking point, like the far right wing does? There really was a 10 year old who got any abortion but let’s talk about illegal immigrants. Putin really didn’t invade to fight “Ukraine Nazis” but lets talk about how the US “made” him do it.
If anyone believes you are a Russian pawn or troll, it is because of your own actions.
If anyone trusts Diane Ravitch, it is because of her own actions.
I personally believe dishonest people, whether it is dienne77 or Ted Cruz or Trump — should be marginalized. The media allows Republicans to spew lies and not lose any credibility, which is wrong. Just because someone like dienne77 or Cruz says something truthful sometimes does not mean that folks who are willing to lie when it serves their purpose should not be marginalized.
And it is blatant lie that Diane Ravitch, or most folks on this blog, resist “anything other than the liberal establishment narrative as presented by CNN/NYT”.
This blog resists LIES, which means it is very resistant to any narrative full of lies, whether it comes from dienne77 or the NYT. But at least the NYT occasionally makes a correction.
“Any dissenting opinions around here are prima facia evidence that the opinion-holder is a ‘Russian asset’, ‘Putin pawn’ and/or ‘Trump troll’.”
Nope. Not buying it. When one parrots propaganda, that’s not dissent. If you can’t back up claims, expect to be held accountable. Too many smart people around here who see through it.
Dienne, as usual you lead with some offensive remark toward “the blog,” casting yourself as an aggrieved and bullied outsider, and the others as a same-opinion blob. Try presenting your own opinion, and backing it up with your own arguments and facts with cites from reliable sources. Do you have one to offer on this topic?
These are people to whom nothing has value. The possibility the story was true (the very REAL possibility, indeed likelihood it was true) was just a minor consideration, and then only for tactical reasons. None of them cared if it was true, and they sure as hell didn’t care about the consequences to the victim, the doctor or anyone else caught in the crossfire of their performance. Because they are all liars, they assume everyone on “the other team” is lying too. Because they manipulate people and use them for what they can get, they assume that’s what their opposition does. This is sociopathic thinking, and these are sociopaths.
I watched Jim Jordan bob and weave when asked whether he should apologize for calling the original story a “lie”, and he said we should be horrified that an illegal alien raped a 10-year-old, and that this was the result of Biden’s lax border policies. He kept the same manic grin on his face all the way. He wasn’t thinking of that 10-year-old for even a picosecond, just how to spin the story as the fault of the president. That girl wasn’t even an abstraction to him. She didn’t exist.
These are useless creatures, these Republicans. They did not come to accomplish anything or to help the people in any way. They do nothing but look smug and spread poison. This is ALL they do, the Jordans, the Boeberts, the Greenes, all of them. We can’t have a country with them anywhere near power.
And we can’t have a country with them anywhere near our children.
Confirmation of Ohio rape victim’s abortion story forces retreat from some conservative doubters
…Now that the story has been verified and the original claims have been debunked, Republicans have taken to politicizing a different dimension of the case: immigration.
Fox News has reported that the man charged in the case is an undocumented immigrant, citing a source with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Other conservative outlets have also updated their reports on the case, highlighting the immigration status of the suspect.
“Undocumented immigrants raping 10 year old girls is probably not the narrative they want on this so expect that inconvenient fact to be dropped,” conservative commentator Stephen Miller said in a tweet on Wednesday.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/child-rape-case-proven-true-after-prominent-republicans-cast-doubt-00045817
Diane-
No one could have penned a better description about the lapse of ethical and moral character in the conservative religious. Media and Republican politicians are handmaidens to them. Conservative Catholics and evangelicals use their power relentlessly. They are cruel and a danger to the young, old, to women, and to men who don’t agree with them.
Thanks for writing about this situation in Ohio where religious zealots pass the laws and smear victims. Everyone should read it.
“lapse of ethical and moral character in the conservative religious”
Doesn’t a “lapse” imply that it was there to begin with?
Did people like Ibdisna’s AG ever have ethical /moral character?
Doubtful.
I’d call it a complete “absence” of ethical and moral character.
Ibdisna’s ” is autocorrects version of Indiana’s
I stand corrected.
Poet, in my ideal world, I would have the smarts that you, Diane, Greg, NYS Parent and Bob have.
100% medical freedom is needed in our country.
If your income level is high enough, you get more than 100% of medical freedom. For me, not thee.
Define your terms. Does “100% medical freedom” include the freedom to infect people with the plague?
It is sad that women and children often end up as collateral damage for men with twisted minds. I am currently watching “Under the Banner of Heaven” on Hulu. The story is based on a real event in an LDS community in Utah in the 1980s. We could have discussions for weeks on this show. There are some parallels to what is going on in the right wing today. Without giving too much away, if you watch it, you will see what I mean.
Yes, and If claiming the rape of the ten year old was s hoax was not bad enough, Republicans in the Senate like Oklahomas’s Lankford want to make it illegal for women to travel out of state for an abortion (and presumably for any other reason tgzt their Taliban leaders font approve of).
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/14/they-want-hold-women-captive-gop-blocks-bill-protecting-right-travel-abortion
Not incidentally, Lankford acts and even looks like he just gooestepoed out of Hitler’s SS. The only thing he lacks is the uniform.
I cannot see how the right can limit interstate travel. Last time I checked, we were still the “United” States, and no passport is needed.
I listened a few days to South Dakota Governor and Morally Challenged Person Kristi Noem completely evading the question about whether this child should be forced to carry this rapist’s baby. It was sickening to see and hear.
I suspect that “interstate commerce” will be the next Constitutional target of John Roberts and the Extremes (hat tip Bob)
Anything that stands in the way of their religious extremism — including the Constitution — will be declared unConstitutional. They already effectively declared the establishment clause of the first amendment unConstitutional with their Maine school funding for religious schools ruling.
By the time Roberts and the others get done, the Constitution will be in tatters.
These unchecked, powerdrunken Justasses need to be stopped before they do any more damage. Biden, Democrats in Congress and the various Democratic governors and state legislatures need to do everything within their power to box the Supreme majority in and effectively emasculate them. Among other things, the recent rulings by the Supremes (including the Maine and NY rulings regarding funding of religious schools and strike down of the NY regulations on concealed carry) should be completely disregarded because they are based on ideology and not on the laws or Constitution.
LDS is approx. 3% of the nation’s population. They are politically and socially powerful in selected states.
When a Republican president is elected, conservative Catholic and evangelical voting is the dominant influence. A review of the credentials of the leadership and staff of National Right to Life and Americans United for Life (its leader is currently being ridiculed for her answers to questions from Rep. Stallwell), you will see Catholicism is the primary background in the bio’s. As example, the head of AUL is a graduate of Georgetown(Catholic) University in D.C. The COO was deputy director for the center for the study of Catholic higher ed, a division of the Cardinal Newman Society. The Chief Engagement Officer is a member of Knights of Columbus and an at-large member of Archbishop Chaput’s pastoral council in Philadelphia. His degrees are from University of Mary and the Catholic University of America, Wash. D.C. AUL’s staff counsel has a J.D. from St. Thomas University in Minn. The school’s Republican student chapter was in the news last year. If I recall correctly, the scandal brought down the leader of the state’s Republican Party. AUL’s chief legal officer is a graduate of Georgetown.
The legal shops achieving success at the national level and state level in the advancement of theocracy are almost exclusively Catholic and evangelical.
LDS may only be 3% but they exert a disproportionate amount of influence on the Republican party and hence on national policy because they are a monolithic voting block.
I saw this first hand when I lived in Utah.
I’ll never forget one time when I went to vote and I overheard a voter ask the polling place person “How do I vote Republican?”
Most of the populace of Utah are so brainwashed that they are completely incapable of thinking for themselves. This in turn gives their leaders (people like Orrin Hatch and Mitt Romney enormous power not only in Utah but in Washington as well).
LDS reflects, on a small scale, the major concern women should have about conservative religion. Bannon said Hispanics and Back (men) are turning to the GOP. The first Mormon Black man was elected to the U.S. House recently. In the history of Mormons elected to the U.S. House, there have been 60+ men elected and only two women. The first woman served one term and the 2nd, two terms. In the past, there have been Democratic LDS members but, all incumbents are currently GOP. In the history of the U.S. Senate, there have been 21 Mormon men elected and 1 women who served one term. All who are currently in the Senate are male.
Correction – 23 Senators. The 3 incumbents are GOP.
Perfectly said, Diane.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
Even if the story were fake which it is not, rape and sexual sexual assault of children happens all the time and will continue to happen. We will have impregnated children in the future. By calling it fake news, Republicans and others don’t have to deal with the question at all. It’a a way of absolving themselves from giving an answer to this situation.
It is more of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” oblivion Republicans seem to prefer about issues related to females.
Right on, Mamie. As those with life experience around incest say, “the only thing taboo about incest is talking about it.” Incest is always rape, and it’s widespread. And keep in mind, incest is not just about fathers/ stepfathers, it’s about anyone taking advantage of a position of trust. That is the also the premise behind statutorial rape: children are easily manipulated by those older than they are, as they exert more power— physically, usually, and often in other ways as well. Silence keeps incest widespread, as well as rape, generally via shame/ guilt of the victim/ victim’s family. I was glad to hear from Diane’s previous post on this subject [7/8] that at least a dozen instances resulting in pregnancy were actually reported to authorities and made the press. Sadly, they are a drop in the bucket.
The idea that the rape of the ten year old was just a “story” never made any logical
sense as it was portrayed: as an effort by Liberals and/or Democrats to show how bad the antiabortion laws are (as if one even needs the rape of a ten year old to prove that)
Any liberal would have to be completely brain dead to think that making something like that up would NOT be investigated and eventually disproved.
So that would leave just one possibility if it actually were a hoax: that it had been planted/fabricated by Republicans to make Liberals and Democrats look bad .
Yes, the nut job republicans who are using the to push a foolish narrative questioning if the girl even exists are a problem, but the narrative of the story is also not accurate. The fact is that based on reading the law, and other sources, there was no reason for the girl to leave the state. The Ohio law has exceptions for these cases. This is conveniently ignored by some pushing a specific narrative.
The story should not be about the girl. What happened to her is a tragedy and the rapist deserves to be punished as severely as possible. She is being used as a political pawn by both sides of this issue. The Washington Post, hardly a bastion of far-right news has even questioned the verocity of the story in a July 13 article (see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/09/one-source-story-about-10-year-old-an-abortion-goes-viral/)
Since this is now in the public realm, the real question is why the Ohio doctor (an unnamed “child abuse doctor”) chose to ignore the law and create this issue in the first place and why the Indiana doctor, Caitlin Bernard chose to go public with this. I would hope their intentions were honorable, but it is a question worth asking.
What you’re saying about the Ohio law is not what the Washington Post, who you claim says the Ohio law provides an exception for this 10-year-old’s case, is not accurate, to say the least. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/14/what-ohio-law-says-about-10-year-old-rape-victim-abortion/
You also don’t understand how a physician must deal with such a vague “exception”. Most lawyers would advise this Ohio doctor not to do this procedure because the possible criminal and civil liability makes such a decision foolhardy. And if you think there aren’t prosecutors out there who would be eager to make this doctor a test case, you don’t know politics.
As it is, the Indiana Attorney General has already threatened the license and freedom of the Indiana doctor. Politicians like him care not one bit about the consequences of their grandstanding and abuse of office. To them, the doctor is just a scalp to be paraded about in the next election campaign. And even if either doctor involved were found blameless (something that is itself unlikely in this political climate), the doctor(s) will have gone bankrupt from lawyer’s fees, lost patients and privileges, and the loss of ability to practice and make a living.
You have a very unrealistic understanding of how any of this works.
You misrepresented the Washington Post article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/14/what-ohio-law-says-about-10-year-old-rape-victim-abortion/
Ohio State Attorney General Yost ridicules the 10-year-old girl (“if she exists”). He says she did not have to leave Ohio, but the language of the law is unclear. There is no exception for rape or incest. I’ll quote from the article in my next comment.
More from Washington Post:
The conservative effort to cast a story about a pregnant 10-year-old Ohio rape victim as a hoax has now fallen apart, with confirmation of the case arriving Wednesday. While some merely noted the initial report hadn’t been confirmed, several conservative media figures and Republican politicians went significantly further in casting it as a dirty trick meant to make the GOP’s post-Roe v. Wade laws look bad; high on that list was Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R). But as attention now turns to the reality of the case and what it means, something else Yost claimed Monday on Fox News looms large: that the girl didn’t actually have to leave Ohio to seek the abortion in Indiana, as she reportedly did. “Speaking of hoaxes, though, can I correct something that everybody’s reporting wrong nationally?” Yost asked the host. He continued: “Ohio’s heartbeat law has a medical emergency exception broader than just the life of the mother. This young girl, if she exists, and if this horrible thing actually happened to her — breaks my heart to think about it — she did not have to leave Ohio to find treatment.” Yost’s appeared to be arguing that Ohio’s law — which bans almost all abortions after a heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks — isn’t actually so stringent that it would actually force a 10-year-old rape victim to carry a child to term. That aspect of all this is important in light of the GOP’s controversial post-Roe plans, which often include not providing abortion exceptions for rape and incest. It’s why the case became big news in the first place.
From Washington Post, 3:
Yost’s meaning wasn’t entirely clear. Some took his comment as claiming Ohio has a rape exception in its abortion ban; it clearly and unambiguously does not. The applicable law allows abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected: • “to prevent the death of the pregnant woman” or • “to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman” Yost didn’t say there was a rape exception. He was apparently arguing that a 10-year old would qualify under one of the actual exceptions — probably the latter, given that it’s the one that’s “broader than just the life of the mother.” Some wagered that a pregnant 10-year-old would trigger that exception. An opinion piece at the conservative Washington Examiner puts it like this: Even if a girl gets her first period at 10 or younger, she likely has not developed a pelvis capable of safely carrying a pregnancy to term, let alone delivering a live baby. Although most conservatives may disagree with Ohio’s six-week abortion ban failing to include a rape and incest exception, just about nobody of note in the pro-life movement would ever favor denying an abortion when a pregnancy seriously imperils the life and physical health of the mother. The Examiner’s editorial board went as far as to cite Yost’s assurance and conclude: “So contrary to the original story, this girl was evidently not taken to Indiana because Ohio law bans such a procedure.” Apparently such certitude, even after all this, is a difficult habit to kick. It’s certainly conceivable that a prosecutor would decide or a court would rule that this case would qualify for that second exception. The World Health Organization has estimated that childbirth and complications from pregnancy are the world’s leading cause of death for girls and women ages 15 to 19. But that doesn’t mean it’s nearly as clear as Yost or the Examiner editorial board concluded. Indeed, the nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission has reportedly determined that such circumstances don’t automatically qualify for an exception. Chris Geidner shared a letter that Yost’s 2022 Democratic opponent received from an analyst from the commission, Amy Archer. Archer in the letter addresses whether “minor victims of sexual assault are able to receive abortions within Ohio after six weeks gestation.” “No,” she reportedly said, “Ohio’s abortion prohibition applies regardless of the circumstances of conception or the age of the mother.” (Archer did not respond to a similar question Thursday.) Yost on Thursday afternoon shared a backgrounder that explained Ohio’s abortion exceptions and gestured toward the second exception. But his office has yet to directly explain how it applies to a 10-year-old rape victim. The document itself states that, “Whether these exceptions apply to a particular case depends upon the facts of the case.” The only facts known at the time of Yost’s comment were the age of the victim and the rape. Also, what is the threshold for “serious risk?” And would any resulting impairment necessarily be “substantial” and “irreversible?” (It must be both.) That’s a crucial point. According to the Ohio law, any doctor who provides a post-fetal-heartbeat abortion that doesn’t qualify under one of these exceptions is guilty of a felony and could face up to a year in prison. Abortion rights advocates and abortion-providing doctors have long warned that vague and untested post-Roe standards would cause doctors to avoid providing abortions that might even cause such questions to be asked, for fear of being prosecuted. (Some states have substantially steeper penalties for illegal abortions — including up to 15 years in Missouri and Tennessee and up to life in prison in Texas.) Of course, the easy solution to all of this would be for lawmakers to more explicitly delineate whether cases like this deserve an exception. But Ohio and many other red states have deliberately gone in the direction of fewer exceptions, even as exceptions like rape and incest were once a consensus political issue — and remain overwhelmingly popular with voters writ large. High-profile GOP Senate candidates including in Ohio have indicated they oppose such exceptions. And there’s little sign of the GOP truly rethinking that now that Roe has been overturned — even in light of this story and its confirmation.
and the doctors are treating the child like a scap to be paraded about as well.
Which doctors?
It is an atrocity on top of an atrocity and it created tragedy.
Mathematical formula like f(x)?
Senate action (an atrocity on top of an atrocity and it created tragedy = Republican political platform and policies + Joe Manchin)
Thanks for making me feel like a mathematician’s neighbor.
Looking at the chalkboard, I’d ask, where is the factor input for the rapist’s action (the literal rapist)?
The more I learn about this and see how, for example, the Indiana AG is now trying to persecute a physician for doing the right thing, the more I’m left speechless with rage.
Absolutely, Mamie. I shudder to think of the “Go to Jail” pass card this will give to further incestuous behavior.
Fear is the order (as per SCUMtUS) of the day.
The Repugnant Party is incapable of feeling humiliation.
Within the GOP, is there a specific demographic that is rabidly anti-abortion and has been for a period much longer than evangelicals?
Mrs Bernard could have faked paperwork. Who is the colleague who called her? Proof of such phone calls to dr Bernard from colleague, from department of health services to police department and phone from mom to department of health services. Video footage of mom with daughters blacked out face at the clinic at the time of abortion. This will not give away dr/ patient confidentiality because the mom has already been interviewed by ONLY ONE TV STATION, everyone already knows who the little girl is. Does the man arrested understand why he is arrested? Why would mom call department of health and not police, either way she would be getting her illegal boyfriend arrested?
He needs to be Castrated if he is guilty of raping the 10 year old and i am by no means saying he didn’t. Im saying even though she may or was raped doesn’t mean she got pregnant.
Too many loose ends.
I AM NOT SAYING HE DID NOT RAPE HER!!!
ALL INFORMATION IS COMING FROM HER even THROUGH OTHER MEANS!!!
Just strange to me. I really hope it’s not true for the little girls sake
“I AM NOT SAYING HE DID NOT RAPE HER!!!”
Yeah, you are. Functionally, that’s all you’ve said.
First, you have no understanding of what doctor/patient privilege is. Doctor/patient privilege does NOT mean “Hey, once someone spills the beans, you can go crazy!” Doctor/patient privilege means the doctor may not, without waiver or consent from the patient, reveal any information from a patient that would expose the identity of the patient. End of.
It doesn’t matter if there’s a story in the papers, or that “everyone knows”. For one thing, “everyone” doesn’t know. They know what the press may reveal, but that is not a license for a doctor to independently violate privilege or confirm absent the patient’s consent.
More disturbingly, you seem to think that it permissible for anyone, absent a lawfully issued warrant, to blithely obtain people’s, and doctors’, telephone records, while, without ANY evidence, suggesting the doctor faked paperwork.
In short, you have given credence to a number of wacko speculations, without giving the victim or the doctor any benefit of whatever doubt you imagine to exist.
You are inventing bogus reasons to disbelieve the story, while demonstrating zero understanding of how privilege, and the law, work.
I am learning that the 10 yr old did not need to leave Ohio for the abortion, but rather her mother took her there as to hide the fact that it was in fact her mothers boyfriend who had raped and impregnated the child.
And by the way the mother is staying with the man who raped and impregnated her daughter.
So, I think this it is shameful to even use this as a story for abortion rights but rather should be focused on child endangerment.
The mother should be held responsible for the cover up of her daughters assault.
The boyfriend should be held responsible for the rape of the child.
That’s it.
By the way I have no interest in politics because just as the word indicates poly means Many and tics means Blood suckers, so you can all root for your favorite team, but at the end of the day they suck.
You are learning wrong. Unless you think the child should not have had an abortion.
How a 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Who Traveled for an Abortion Became Part of a Political Firestorm
July 15, 2022
The case of a 10-year-old girl who had to travel from her home in Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion after being raped has become national news—and a major political issue following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The child, then nearly six-and-a-half weeks pregnant, could not legally receive an abortion in Ohio due to the state’s “fetal heartbeat” law, which went into effect after the Court abolished the constitutional right to an abortion. Her doctor phoned Indianapolis physician Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who agreed to perform the procedure. Bernard went public with the story in the Indianapolis Star…
https://news.yahoo.com/10-old-rape-victim-traveled-232950347.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=ma
Roe vs. Wade should never have been eliminated. Every SICK person on the Right to Life team should be put on a list. When an unwanted baby is born, a lotto is held and the name chosen, the Right-to-Lifer would be lawfully required to raise that unwanted, ill, drug-addicted, F.A.S. ” special needs,” baby!!!!! Enjoy, you Terrible fascists!!!