In the USA, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, the case of a 10-year-old rape victim has come to light. Several parties had time to question the case, but the police have now arrested the suspect.
On Wednesday, a 27-year-old man in Ohio in the United States was charged with raping a ten-year-old girl. The case became public in the United States and internationally, as the child could not get an abortion in her home state of Ohio due to the tightened abortion legislation, but had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion.
In Ohio’s neighboring state of Indiana, abortion laws are – at least for now – more lenient, and termination of pregnancy is possible up to 22 weeks.
According to the Columbus police, the man charged with rape has confessed to having raped the child at least twice. The police who investigated the case told the court session on Wednesday that the girl’s pregnancy became known when her mother contacted the authorities on June 22, says Columbus Dispatch magazine (you will switch to another service).
A man suspected of raping was arrested in Columbus, Ohio on Tuesday and charged on Wednesday. The man has not officially responded to the accusation.
Court documents do not indicate whether the suspect knew his victim beforehand. The Prosecutor’s Office has not agreed to comment on the case, and the police did not respond to AP’s request for additional information.
Pregnancy three days beyond the legal limit
The girl’s case came to light when Indianapolis Star magazine (you will switch to another service) said a gynecologist working in Indianapolis at the beginning of July Caitlin from Bernardwho received a call from a sex abuse doctor in Ohio: would Bernard be able to take in a ten-year-old rape victim who needed an abortion?
Ohio tightened its abortion laws just hours after the US Supreme Court on June 24 overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion at the federal level. As soon as the decision passed to the state, in Ohio, abortion after six weeks of pregnancy was made illegal.
The patient of the doctor who called Bernard was a ten-year-old rape victim whose pregnancy had lasted six weeks and three days.
A police officer who testified at the court hearing on Wednesday said that the girl had an abortion on June 30 in Indianapolis. According to the police, the DNA obtained from the abortion is now used to confirm the suspected paternity.
The doctor’s report was questioned
Many parties already had time to challenge the veracity of the case told by Bernardi. Among them is the attorney general of the state of Ohio, a Republican Dave Yostwho commented on Tuesday to the Fox News channel, (you will switch to another service) that he hadn’t heard a hint from the authorities that such a case or arrests even existed.
Yost also told the channel that the young rape victim would have fulfilled the exceptional condition of Ohio’s abortion ban, which allows termination of pregnancy even after six weeks, if the pregnancy poses a serious threat to life or health.
Director of Pro-Choice Ohio, an NGO that promotes abortion rights Kellie Copeland however, stated on Wednesday that the ten-year-old’s pregnancy would not have met this emergency condition.
Also a Republican congressman from Ohio Jim Jordan initially tweeted that the incident was a “total lie”. However, on Wednesday, Jordan stated in his tweet that the suspect should be charged according to “the strictest letter of the law”.
A state governor Mike DeWinea Republican himself, called the incident a tragedy.
– He has said that if the evidence supports this, the rapist should spend the rest of his life in prison, DeWine’s representative commented.
– Imagine you are that little girl. I’m serious, imagine you’re him. Ten years old. Raped, six weeks pregnant. Already traumatized. And forced to travel to another state, Biden stated.