BY ATHENA THORNE| P J MEDIA
The controversial story of a 10-year-old rape victim who was transported from Ohio to Indiana to procure an abortion has been very clarifying. First reported by pro-abortion leftists around the world, the story was picked up by PJ Media’s Megan Fox, who was the first reporter to ask questions about the sizable gaps in the narrative. Megan’s outstanding research arguably began the pressure campaign that ultimately produced an announcement of the arrest of the illegal alien rapist three weeks after the crime was first referred to police.
Why did the arrest take so long? It’s certainly possible investigators wanted to make sure the case was rock-solid before making an arrest. Or was law enforcement dragging its feet on arresting an illegal alien in a high-profile, barbaric case until the spotlight the pro-aborts had shined on it was focused elsewhere?
But more importantly, the left has just lost another one of its major talking points as the post-Dobbs landscape takes shape: no one will force pregnant children to carry babies to term. Sorry, handmaids: barely-pubescent raped girls will not be experiencing the “forced birth” you’ve all been screeching about.
One of the many fishy aspects of this story is that the victim was transported across state lines to procure an abortion, even though Ohio’s new heartbeat law would have permitted the procedure to take place within the state. The law allows abortion in Ohio when medically necessary: “‘Medical necessity’ means a medical condition of a pregnant woman that, in the reasonable judgment of the physician who is attending the woman, so complicates the pregnancy that it necessitates the immediate performance or inducement of an abortion.”
This basically rules out forcing any pregnant girl to carry a pregnancy to term. How young is too young to have a baby? This will have to be established, and the medical community will come to a consensus. A momentous change like overturning Roe v. Wade will naturally take some time to sort out. But the tragic Ohio case has just given it a big nudge.
Still another piece of fallout is that Indiana is now investigating the doctor who performed the abortion, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, for failure to report the rape of a minor — something she’s been investigated for before. And not only that, even the mainstream media has been shamed into reporting the investigation. Good: it’s long past time the abortion industry took responsibility for reporting abusers consistently and in accordance with the law.
Was the poor victim unnecessarily transported across state lines for the procedure just so an activist doctor would have a headline? Let’s pray that, for the sake of the child, that’s not the case. Perhaps the Ohio doctors were just overly wary of the newly triggered heartbeat law. But going forward, it’s now clearly established that children don’t need to travel out of states with laws like Ohio’s to terminate pregnancies.
The tragedy of rape and abortion is that the mother did not choose the pregnancy, but that’s also not the baby’s fault. I don’t believe there is a good answer in situations like that. But when you add in the loss of life or health of the mother, then the scales tip further to one sad side than the other. Pro-life absolutism is unlikely to become law in any state.
At any rate, pro-abortion leftists wanted to shine the spotlight on this story, and now they’re getting what they asked for. Good.
