Right-Wing Media & Politicians Are Being Absolute Monsters Over 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Needing an Abortion

I didn’t think the story about a 10-year-old girl who was forced to travel across state lines for an abortion after being raped could get any more horrific but Republicans sure are trying.

Earlier this month, the Indianapolis Star Tribune reported that the young girl’s parents discovered she was pregnant at six weeks and three days, making her ineligible to receive care in her state of Ohio, which now bans abortion after about six weeks. To receive that care, she had to travel to Indiana, which allows abortions up to 22 weeks.

Now, Indiana’s Republican attorney general wants to launch an investigation into the doctor who provided the child with that abortion.

AG Todd Rokita went on Fox News to discuss the issue, calling Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indianapolis-based OBGYN who provided the girl with necessary medical care, an “abortion activist acting as a doctor.” He also (seemingly baselessly) accused her of having “a history of failing to report” child abuse cases.

“We’re gathering the evidence as we speak, and we’re going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure if she failed to report. And in Indiana it’s a crime to intentionally not report,” Rokita said.

According to The Daily Beast, “A Columbus Police detective said the abortion happened eight days after the girl’s pregnancy was reported to child services and law enforcement in Ohio by her mother. Bernard said she performed the procedure after being contacted by a child abuse doctor in Ohio.”

Rokita also accused the media and Democrats of “politicizing” this young girl’s trauma. “They were right there jumping in on all of this, thinking that it was going to be great for their abortionist movement when this girl has been so brutalized,” he said.

That’s a pretty bold statement to make after Republicans and conservative media figures spent recent days proclaiming loudly that this girl didn’t even exist, declaring her story to be fabricated. Right-wing “news” outlets from Fox News to the NY Post immediately started trying to debunk the story. Fox News’ Jesse Watters called it a “hoax” and “politically timed disinformation” just two days before this new interview with Rokita. YouTuber Tim Pool also used the word “hoax.” Republican Rep. Jim Jordan posted a tweet calling the story a “lie.” The Wall Street Journal published an entire op-ed calling it “an abortion story too good to confirm.”

That’s ghoulish behavior from a lot of grown adults, discussing a very real child who has undergone impossible trauma. Yesterday, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a man was arrested and confessed to the girl’s rape, offering proof that shouldn’t have been necessary to convince those monsters of this reality.

In response to that report, the WSJ added an editor’s note to their shameful article and published a second op-ed “correcting the record.” (If they apologized, it didn’t happen before the paywall.) Jordan tried to quietly delete his tweet as if no one would notice. Watters actually tried to take credit for having put “pressure” on the story. Plenty of others, including Rokita, have pivoted to focusing on the man’s status as an undocumented immigrant, blaming Joe Biden’s immigration policies, conveniently ignoring the fact that, according to court testimony (as reported by the Dispatch), the man has been living in the U.S. for at least seven years.

Nieman Lab published a detailed timeline of this media ordeal today with the headline, “Unimaginable abortion stories will become more common. Is American journalism ready?” The answer is very clearly no.

(image: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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