This terrible story—which is nearly too horrible to contemplate on just about every level—went viral quickly in the days after Roe v. Wade was repealed:
A 10-year-old rape victim, who was six weeks pregnant, was denied an abortion following the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade. The ruling means there is no longer a nationwide right to terminate a pregnancy and individual states now have the freedom to make their own laws on abortion access.
The girl, who lives in Ohio, was ineligible to have an abortion in her own state in light of Roe v Wade being overturned and was forced to travel to Indiana for the procedure. Currently, abortion in Indiana is legal, but lawmakers are expected to bring in tighter restrictions later this month when the state assembly comes together.
"It's hard to imagine that in just a few short weeks we will have no ability to provide that care," Dr Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, told the Columbus Dispatch. Bernard had treated the girl after a colleague in Ohio who works with child abuse victims called and asked for help.
This is the kind of story that is primed to fire us up. It touches nearly every nerve we have concerning crime, abuse, child safety, injustice, brutality, law—just about everything.
But there are reasons to be skeptical, even very skeptical, of this story—something more than a few people have noted online.
Let's start with the main players of the story: An unnamed girl, an unnamed Ohio doctor, and Dr. Caitlin Bernard of Indianapolis.
It's understandable that the alleged abortion patient would go unnamed, given her age. It is strange, however, that the doctor from Ohio would remain anonymous. It is presumably (not yet) illegal, after all, for a doctor to call up a colleague to arrange an abortion in another state; why would the doctor want to keep his name suppressed?
In that same vein, both the nameless doctor and Caitlin Bernard are presumably mandatory reporters when it comes to child sex abuse. Both Ohio and Indiana have strict mandatory reporting rules (in Indiana, literally everyone is a mandatory reporter). A 10-year-old's being pregnant is unquestionably an instance of child abuse, which means both doctors should have reported this crime. Did they?
Of course, it is worth stressing that the story is entirely possible. Horrific as it is, 10-year-olds sometimes get raped and in theory could get pregnant. But even if the story is indeed true, as one mental health counselor wrote, there are still major issues with it:
One fellow, meanwhile, voiced skepticism over what would seem to be the extreme statistical anomaly of a 10-year-old's pregnancy in just the last few weeks:
Man I wish we had a class of people who were paid to, I don't know, investigate and report on these things in an unbiased way to separate fact from fiction!
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