Ten-year-old Ohio rape victim travels to Indiana for abortion

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• A 10-year-old rape victim was forced to get an abortion in Indiana after Ohio’s ban took effect.
• The girl was referred by a child abuse doctor in Ohio.
• Ohio banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy following the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

A 10-year-old Ohio girl had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion after the Supreme Court overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indianapolis, terminated the pregnancy of a 10-year-old rape victim.

A child abuse doctor in Ohio referred the patient to Dr. Bernard after the state made abortion illegal following six weeks of pregnancy. The unnamed girl was reportedly six weeks and three days pregnant.

Abortion is still legal in Indiana. However, Dr. Bernard is concerned doctors there soon won’t be able to perform abortion as state lawmakers are expected to further restrict or ban abortion during an Indiana General Assembly special session on July 25.

“It’s hard to imagine that in just a few short weeks we will have no ability to provide that care,” Dr. Bernard said.

There is an influx of out-of-state patients in Indiana following the SCOTUS ruling. Dr. Katie McHugh, another Indiana ob-gyn, told the Enquirer she has received “an insane amount of requests” from Ohio and Kentucky. Her office has been receiving around 20 out-of-state calls a day from between five and eight a day.

In Kentucky, a judge has temporarily stopped the state from enacting a “trigger ban” on abortion, and Ohio clinics have taken out a lawsuit to find the state’s six-week ban unconstitutional.

The SCOTUS’  6-to-3 ruling reversed the nearly five-decade old ruling, giving states the power to pass their own laws around abortion. Since the reversal, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and South Dakota have already banned abortion in their states, after putting trigger laws in place that governors enacted following the SCOTUS ruling.

Protests have since erupted nationwide. President Joe Biden has spoken out against the decision, which he called the “realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.”

Source: The Guardian