The fate of the 10-year-old girl has engaged and upset people all over the United States. Advocates for abortion say Republicans cannot claim to protect lives when they force children who have been sexually abused to carry out a pregnancy.
“The 10-year-old little girl in Ohio deserves someone to fight for her,” former Ohio Senator Nina Turner wrote on Twitter.
Since 1973, it has been a constitutional right to have an abortion in the United States. But after the Supreme Court decided on June 24, 2022, to overturn the “Roe v. Wade decision”, several Republican states in the country have chosen to tighten their abortion laws or make abortion completely illegal.
The state of Ohio announced just hours after HD’s decision to ban all abortions where the pregnancy has exceeded 6 weeks.
Due to the new laws, the 10-year-old girl, whose pregnancy had just passed 6 weeks, was refused an abortion in her home state and was forced to travel to the neighboring state of Indiana to perform the procedure.
The girl is one of many who are now forced to cross state borders in order to perform an abortion, reports the newspaper Indianapolis star.
But even this may soon cease to be an option. Because at the end of July, the state of Indiana will also consider whether it is relevant to tighten abortion rules or not.
“It’s hard to imagine that in just a few weeks we might not be able to provide that care,” the gynecologist who treated the 10-year-old in Indiana told the Indianapolis Star.