First, conservatives tried to pretend that this girl didn’t exist, despite an Indiana obstetrician-gynecologist saying she had treated the girl. The Wall Street Journal even published an editorial calling it “an abortion story too good to confirm.” Fox News, of course, readily ran with the smear campaign. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) initially tweeted ― and then deleted ― that the whole thing was a “lie.”
This girl does exist, and sadly, she did go through this horrible experience. This week, a 27-year-old man was charged with raping her.
This news did not provoke much soul-searching. Republicans instead doubled-down on their position that people should be forced to give birth.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) said he plans to investigate the doctor who provided the abortion to the 10-year-old girl, even though abortion is still legal in the state.
James Bopp, a conservative lawyer who has written model legislation encouraging states to ban abortion in all cases except to save the life of the pregnant person, said he believes the girl should have been forced to have the baby.
“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,” Bopp told Politico Tuesday.
And on Thursday, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) blocked Democratic legislation that would protect the right to travel across state lines to seek abortion services. During a civil trial deposition in 2010, Lankford reportedly took the position that 13-year-olds can consent to having sex, according to a transcript provided to the Associated Press.
Other Republican politicians, such as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, have defended their state laws that provide no abortion exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
Large majorities of Americans support abortion access in those instances, even in red states.
Other Republicans have tried to downplay the possibility of pregnancy from rape and incest, but that task was made harder after the nationally publicized case of the 10-year-old girl in Ohio. Some Republicans were actually shocked that a girl that age could get pregnant, underscoring that they shouldn’t be writing laws that dictate these medical choices.
Perhaps the most absurd attempt to move away from this case came Thursday from Catherine Glenn Foster, the president and CEO of Americans United for Life.
Asked about the possibility of 10-year-old girls getting raped, impregnated and then being forced to give birth, Foster eventually seemed to suggest that the girl would be able to terminate the pregnancy ― but that it wouldn’t be an abortion.
“If a 10-year-old became pregnant as a result of rape and it was threatening her life, then that’s not an abortion,” Foster said. “So it would not fall under any abortion restriction in our nation.”
It would be an abortion.
Even if some Republicans are still squeamish about saying outright that rape victims who are 10, 12, 14, 18 or whatever should be forced to give birth, that is the result of these policies that ban abortion.
Even when these exceptions for rape or incest exist, it is often incredibly difficult for pregnant people to meet the standards ― such as reporting the assault to police ― required to qualify. The Guttmacher Institute notes that they are “designed to be insurmountable and are often retraumatizing if not dangerous for the patient.”
As Guttmacher added, the best way to support rape and incest survivors is “removing abortion bans and restrictions entirely.”
