Authorities in Indiana said they are investigating a gynecologist who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who had been raped — a crisis following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the federal right to terminate a pregnancy.
Caitlin Bernard said earlier this month that she treated the girl in Indianapolis after being contacted by a colleague in neighboring Ohio.
A trigger law banning all abortions after six weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest, went into effect in Ohio last month after the nation’s Supreme Court ended decades of constitutional protections for the right to terminate a pregnancy.
The girl, who was raped in May by a man arrested on Tuesday, had exceeded the six-week deadline. For an abortion, she traveled to Indiana, where the procedure is legal up to 21 weeks.
But authorities in the mainly Republican state oppose abortion and are now considering banning the procedure.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita criticized Bernard Wednesday night, accusing her of failing to bring the girl’s case to the attention of authorities, as required by state underage sex crimes law.
“We have this abortion activist acting as a doctor who hasn’t filed a complaint in the past,” Rokita said on Fox News.
“So we’re gathering the information. We’re gathering the evidence as we speak and we’ll fight it to the end, including checking her license if she doesn’t come forward,” he added.
President Joe Biden spoke about the Ohio rape victim during a July 8 ceremony where he signed into law protecting reproductive rights and asked Congress to approve Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established nationwide abortion rights.
“Just last week it was reported that a 10-year-old girl in Ohio was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to travel out of state to Indiana to attempt an abortion,” Biden said.
Until the suspect was arrested, right-wing media and several Ohio authorities questioned whether the story was true.
Now anti-abortion activists are accusing pro-choice advocates of using the girl to advance their cause and blaming Biden’s immigration policies for the tragedy because the detainee is a Guatemalan who entered the country illegally.
“This is a horrible, horrible scene being caused by Marxists and socialists and those in the White House who want lawlessness on the frontier,” Rokita said.
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