An Abortion Is Not An Abortion If A 10-Year-Old Gets One, Says Anti-Abortion Leader
In a truly bizarre exchange during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, the leader of a national anti-abortion organization claimed that it “would not be an abortion” if a 10-year-old rape victim got pregnant and … had an abortion.
Catherine Glenn Foster, the president and CEO of Americans United for Life, was responding to questions from Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) about whether she thinks a 10-year-old girl would or should “choose” to have a baby. After some back and forth, during which Foster refused to answer the question, she came up with a response.
“I believe it would probably impact her life, and so, therefore, it would fall under any exception and would not be an abortion,” said Foster.
“Wait,” replied Swalwell, puzzled. “It would not be an abortion if a 10-year-old with her parents made the decision not to have a baby that was the result of a rape?”
“If a 10-year-old became pregnant as a result of rape and it was threatening her life, then that’s not an abortion,” Foster said. “So it would not fall under any abortion restriction in our nation.”
Here’s a video clip of their exchange:
The Americans United for Life president appeared to be trying to redefine abortion to avoid saying that, yes, of course, a 10-year-old rape victim should be allowed to have an abortion.
It’s not even a hypothetical scenario: Earlier this month, a 10-year-old girl who had been raped at least twice was forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion. She and her family had to go to another state for the medical procedure because, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Ohio imposed a ban on all abortions after six weeks. The 10-year-old was reportedly six weeks and three days pregnant.
After Foster made her bonkers claim, Swalwell turned to another committee witness, Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign.
“Ms. Warbelow, are you familiar with disinformation?” he asked.
“Uh, yes I am,” said Warbelow.
“Did you just hear some disinformation?” asked Swalwell.
“Yes, I heard some very significant disinformation,” Warbelow replied, offering an actual definition of what an abortion is.
“An abortion is a procedure, it’s a medical procedure, that individuals undergo for a wide range of circumstances, including because they have been sexually assaulted, raped in the case of the 10-year-old,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether or not there is a statutory exemption. It is still a medical procedure that is understood to be an abortion.”
In the case of the 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio, Warbelow added that there is no exception in Ohio state law that allows abortions when the life or the health of the pregnant person is at risk.
“That’s why that 10-year-old had to cross state lines in order to receive an abortion,” she said.
Swalwell later called out Foster on Twitter and spelled out why she had such a hard time answering his question.
“MAGA GOP doesn’t want you to know their abortion laws force pregnancies on little girls,” he said.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
Republicans shocked a 10-year-old can get pregnant after Ohio rape victim abortion story proves true
Scott Wong and Sahil Kapur
Thu, July 14, 2022 at 3:40 PM·6 min read
WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans who oppose abortion rights are struggling to talk about the horrific case of a 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel across state lines to Indiana to get an abortion because of strict laws in her home state, Ohio.
The case made international headlines after President Joe Biden decried Republican policies that forced the "already traumatized" child to have to travel out of state to terminate the pregnancy. Republicans and right-wing media criticized Biden, suggesting the case had been fabricated, only for a suspect to be arrested days later.
Confronted with the reality of the case, GOP lawmakers interviewed Thursday appeared to be grappling with how to respond — from confusion to blaming the media.
Many expressed shock that it was even biologically possible for the 10-year-old child to become pregnant. Some said they were torn “morally” about whether abortions should be allowed in cases of incest or rape, as in the Ohio case. And others tried to turn the conversation to the undocumented immigrant who prosecutors allege raped the girl.
“I’m amazed a 10-year-old got pregnant. … You really wrestle with that. That’s a tough one,” Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio, said Thursday.
Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., said, “I can’t imagine being 10 years old” and pregnant, adding: “I don’t think I was even able to have children when I was 10 years old. … It’s just awful. It’s awful all the way around.”
Said Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas: “I’m a pro-life guy, OK? And God’s in charge on this. ... We're all God's children. This is a tough call, and I don’t know if I know that answer right now, because now you’ve got another baby involved: She’s pregnant. … She’s a baby.”
Just days earlier, several high-profile Republicans said the story was fake, using it to accuse Democrats of overreach in their response to the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said the story was likely to be a “fabrication.” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted “Another lie. Anyone surprised?” in response to a Washington Examiner story about Yost’s saying he had found no evidence of the young rape victim.
Jordan quietly deleted the tweet Wednesday after prosecutors charged Gershon Fuentes, 27, who court documents say confessed to the rape.
Asked whether he regretted calling the story a lie, Jordan blamed Fuentes, an undocumented immigrant, and the news media.
“We didn’t know that an illegal alien did this heinous act. We never doubted the child,” Jordan said. The lie was “the news headline … the headline from your profession. We doubted Joe Biden, which is usually a smart thing to do, but we didn’t know that this illegal immigrant had done this terrible thing. He should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Williams, who represents the border state of Texas, said: “Where’s the conversation about an illegal person doing this? How do you defend this? How do you defend this guy who came over illegally, and we’ve got 5 million of them over here?”
Biden and White House officials had read about the case in The Indianapolis Star, which first reported the girl's story on July 1. That story quoted Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis OB-GYN, who said she got a call from an Ohio doctor specializing in child abuse who had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks pregnant. Because Ohio made abortions after six weeks illegal in the wake of the Roe decision, the girl had to travel.
Biden said in his speech about protecting abortion access last week: “She was forced to have to travel out of the state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life. Ten years old — 10 years old — raped, six weeks pregnant, already traumatized, was forced to travel to another state.”
The case touches on several hot-button issues being debated by policymakers in Washington and in state capitals around the country: abortion rights, immigration and interstate travel.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican former member of Congress, said he is investigating the Indianapolis doctor who performed the abortion.
Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., one of the leading voices in Congress in favor of abortion rights, said: “This is a case that will have to be challenged in court by those who support abortion rights. I am looking out for the welfare of this child. No 10-year-old should have to even undergo such a procedure, but then to have to go out of state to do it is cruel beyond belief.”
The House will vote Friday on Chu’s bill that would restore the right to an abortion, as well as another bill to protect Americans who travel to receive reproductive health care. Neither has enough support in the Senate.
Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., who opposes abortion rights, said the 10-year-old’s situation represents “a high-profile kind of case describing why something might need to be done” about the issue of abortion statewide in Indiana.
“I’m going to wait to see what my state actually puts into legislation, probably, before I comment on any of that,” he said. “I’m just glad it’s going back to the states.”
Lesko, a former state legislator who is a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, said she backs an exception for abortion when the mother’s life is at risk. But she said she is undecided about whether exceptions should be granted in cases of rape or incest.
“This is obviously a very difficult moral question. And so I struggle with it, quite frankly,” Lesko said of the Ohio case. “I have a close friend who was raped and had the baby and has told me that she is thankful every day that — she was a minor, and she decided to have the child, because it’s a blessing. …
“Obviously, I feel awful for the 10-year-old. … I am more in favor of definitely the life of the mother, and I’m still morally struggling over the other ones.”
Gibbs, the House member from Ohio, argued that technological advances since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision show that “a fetus is a human being.”
But Gibbs also wondered whether the Ohio girl’s life could have been endangered had she carried out the pregnancy. Like Lesko, he backs exceptions for abortions when mothers’ lives are at risk.
“First you have to ask the question, since she’s 10 years old and be able to go full term with the pregnancy, would her life be in danger? I don’t know. There are medical questions there because of her age — I’m just raising it as a thought,” Gibbs said in an interview.
“In this case, if there was going to be an abortion, there would have to be a medical need on behalf of the 10-year-old mother," he added.
Moderate GOP Rep. David Joyce of Ohio said the case of the 10-year-old girl is tragic but straightforward: She had a right to get an abortion given the horrible circumstances.
“It’s always been my position that, as a former prosecutor, in instances of rape, incest or mother’s health that there should be exceptions to the rule,” Joyce said. “While I’m pro-life, I understand that I couldn’t fathom having to carry a baby to term in which we were the victim of rape.”
Jim Jordan Has No Regrets for Calling 10-Year-Old Rape Victim’s Abortion a ‘Lie’
Justin Baragona
Thu, July 14, 2022
CNN
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) refused to apologize for his since-deleted tweet describing the story of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim as a “lie,” claiming on Thursday that he was merely “responding to a headline” and took down the post once the alleged rapist was charged.
Republicans and right-wing pundits have been backtracking and pivoting after 27-year-old Gerson Fuentes was arraigned in court on Wednesday on felony charges of raping a person under 13. Court records revealed that the alleged rape of the 10-year-old girl took place on May 12, the girl’s pregnancy was then referred to local child services on June 22, and eight days later she had a medical abortion in neighboring Indiana.
The story of the unidentified child’s rape and abortion had quickly become a flashpoint in the debate over abortion rights after the Indianapolis Star reported on her plight on July 1. While right-wing media—and some mainstream journalists—cast doubt on the veracity of the report because it was single-sourced, the Star’s source was an Indiana obstetrician-gynecologist who spoke with an Ohio child-abuse doctor who’d examined the girl. (The patient was six weeks and three days pregnant, right after Ohio’s trigger law outlawed abortion after six weeks following Roe v. Wade’s reversal.)
Sharing a July 12 story from The Washington Examiner on Ohio Attorney General David Yost claiming his office hadn’t seen any evidence of the 10-year-old rape victim, Jordan tweeted: “Another lie. Anyone surprised?”
Once Fuentes’ arrest was reported on Wednesday, however, the Ohio congressman quietly deleted the tweet without any explanation. (Yost, for his part, released a statement acknowledging the arrest. He did not apologize for his bombastic comments that fueled a right-wing outrage cycle).
CNN reporter Manu Raju finally got Jordan to break his silence on his false tweet on Thursday. The MAGA lawmaker did not offer up any regrets. Instead, parroting other conservatives, he pivoted to discussing Fuentes’ status as an undocumented immigrant.
“Why did you delete the tweet?” Raju asked.
“Well, because we learned this was an illegal alien that did this heinous crime,” Jordan responded. “So we deleted the tweet.”
The CNN correspondent then asked if Jordan had apologized to the girl or the family for “suggesting it was a lie,” prompting the congressman to resort to some pretzel logic.
“I never doubted the child,” he declared. “I was responding to a headline from your profession, the news profession, which happens all the time on Twitter. I doubted Joe Biden, which is usually a smart thing to do.”
While announcing his executive order last week to protect access to reproductive health care, the president referenced the Star’s report, prompting The Washington Post to publish a fact-check that raised questions about the story. That article, which has since been updated, was soon followed by the Wall Street Journal editorial board labeling the rape a “fanciful tale” and multiple Fox News segments calling the story “fake” and “not true.”
GOP Rep’s ‘Despicable’ Take On Child Rape Case
Even Forcing 10-Year-Old Rape Victims To Give Birth Is No Longer Too Much For The GOP
Thu, July 14, 2022
It used to be that saying something extreme about abortion would be considered toxic, even in the Republican Party.
Remember Todd Akin? In 2012, Akin, then a Republican congressman, looked like he was all set to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. But then he started talking about something he knew nothing about ― how women get pregnant. Specifically, he talked about pregnancy caused by rape.
“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” he said. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist.”
Akin’s comments were widely denounced as ignorant and offensive ― including by members of his own party. National Republicans unsuccessfully pushed for him to drop out of the race. He then lost to McCaskill.
There was also Richard Mourdock, another 2012 GOP Senate candidate who justified opposing abortion in cases of rape, saying that if a woman becomes pregnant under those circumstances, “it’s something God intended.”
In this case, national Republicans distanced themselves from Mourdock’s comments even while many of them stood by him. He lost the Senate race.
In 2010, Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle was asked what she would say to a young girl who was raped by her father, became pregnant and was considering an abortion.
“I think that two wrongs don’t make a right,” Angle replied. “And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at-risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.”
Angle also lost her race.
But these sorts of positions are no longer outliers in the GOP. The rhetoric is not only widely embraced, but this stance of forced birth has become law in many states thanks to the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturning Roe v. Wade.
It’s true that abortions resulting from rape and incest are a small percentage of overall abortions. And to be clear, there are no “good” or “bad” reasons for having an abortion.
But those cases often receive the most attention because they are so shocking and horrifying, especially when the victims are children themselves.
Nothing could provide a clearer example of where the Republican Party is now than the case of the 10-year-old girl in Ohio who was impregnated by her rapist and then barred from having an abortion in her own state. The girl ended up traveling to Indiana for the procedure.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) wants to investigate the doctor who performed the abortion on the 10-year-old rape victim. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) wants to investigate the doctor who performed the abortion on the 10-year-old rape victim. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
First, conservatives tried to pretend that this girl didn’t exist, despite an Indiana obstetrician-gynecologist saying she had treated the girl. The Wall Street Journal even published an editorial calling it “an abortion story too good to confirm.” Fox News, of course, readily ran with the smear campaign. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) initially tweeted ― and then deleted ― that the whole thing was a “lie.”
This girl does exist, and sadly, she did go through this horrible experience. This week, a 27-year-old man was charged with raping her.
This news did not provoke much soul-searching. Republicans instead doubled-down on their position that people should be forced to give birth.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) said he plans to investigate the doctor who provided the abortion to the 10-year-old girl, even though abortion is still legal in the state.
James Bopp, a conservative lawyer who has written model legislation encouraging states to ban abortion in all cases except to save the life of the pregnant person, said he believes the girl should have been forced to have the baby.
“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” Bopp told Politico Tuesday.
And on Thursday, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) blocked Democratic legislation that would protect the right to travel across state lines to seek abortion services. During a civil trial deposition in 2010, Lankford reportedly took the position that 13-year-olds can consent to having sex, according to a transcript provided to the Associated Press.
Other Republican politicians, such as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, have defended their state laws that provide no abortion exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
Large majorities of Americans support abortion access in those instances, even in red states.
Other Republicans have tried to downplay the possibility of pregnancy from rape and incest, but that task was made harder after the nationally publicized case of the 10-year-old girl in Ohio. Some Republicans were actually shocked that a girl that age could get pregnant, underscoring that they shouldn’t be writing laws that dictate these medical choices.
Perhaps the most absurd attempt to move away from this case came Thursday from Catherine Glenn Foster, the president and CEO of Americans United for Life.
Asked about the possibility of 10-year-old girls getting raped, impregnated and then being forced to give birth, Foster eventually seemed to suggest that the girl would be able to terminate the pregnancy ― but that it wouldn’t be an abortion.
“If a 10-year-old became pregnant as a result of rape and it was threatening her life, then that’s not an abortion,” Foster said. “So it would not fall under any abortion restriction in our nation.”
It would be an abortion.
Even if some Republicans are still squeamish about saying outright that rape victims who are 10, 12, 14, 18 or whatever should be forced to give birth, that is the result of these policies that ban abortion.
Even when these exceptions for rape or incest exist, it is often incredibly difficult for pregnant people to meet the standards ― such as reporting the assault to police ― required to qualify. The Guttmacher Institute notes that they are “designed to be insurmountable and are often retraumatizing if not dangerous for the patient.”
As Guttmacher added, the best way to support rape and incest survivors is “removing abortion bans and restrictions entirely.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
‘Oh, God, no’: Republicans fear voter
backlash after Indiana child rape case
INDIANAPOLIS—Republicans knew the minute Roe v. Wade was overturned that they had a political problem, particularly with moderates in the suburbs who they need to vote for GOP candidates in the midterms.
The unfolding story of a 10-year-old rape victim who crossed state lines from Ohio for an abortion in Indiana is confirming just how damaging the issue may be.
“Oh, God no,” one prominent Republican strategist said, after members of his party suggested the victim should have carried the pregnancy to term. “Very bad,” said another. Or as one anti-abortion rights Indiana Republican strategist put it, “I’m not touching this story with a 10-foot-pole wrapped in a blanket wrapped in a whatever.”
In the three weeks since the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe, Republicans poised for a winning midterm election have strained to keep public attention squarely on President Joe Biden’s weak job approval ratings and on inflation, fearful that abortion — a deeply felt issue that polls poorly for conservatives — could lift Democratic turnout and push moderates away from the GOP.
The case has become an instant flashpoint in the nation’s abortion wars, alarming Republicans as they try to use abortion to rally base voters without alienating the majority of Americans who say abortion should remain legal in at least some circumstances.
But the case of the pregnant 10-year-old has laid bare how uncontrollable GOP messaging around abortion may be. Not only were right-wing media outlets and Republican politicians who cast doubt on the story forced to backtrack once the facts of the case were confirmed, but the hits to Republicans appear likely to keep coming.
On Thursday, Jim Bopp, the National Right to Life Committee’s general counsel, inflamed the issue when he told POLITICO that the 10-year-old girl should have carried her pregnancy to term – a statement he later said resulted in him receiving death threats.
Despite what GOP leaders and strategists would prefer, the story is unlikely to fade quickly. Later this month, Indiana’s state legislature plans to convene a special session explicitly to pass new curbs on abortion, likely becoming the first state to do so in the wake of the Dobbs decision that reversed the national right to abortion enshrined by Roe in 1973.
“These are the kind of things that are going to breathe life into the Democrats’ hopes of maintaining some sort of coalition,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country. “I don’t think this is the dominant issue as we’re going into November, but these kinds of unforced errors are lifelines for the Democrats.”
Thomas said the Indiana case has already come up in at least one race he is working on and that he has advised candidates that, “You try to avoid the topic. You try to pivot to another issue.”
“Every day that we’re talking about anything but Biden’s cost of living is a wasted day politically,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist. “You know, we’ve got a historic opportunity here this November, and let’s not blow it.”
Another national GOP strategist who works on several high-profile campaigns said Bopps’ comments could highlight exactly the parts of anti-abortion legislation that make moderate voters squeamish.
“The overall goal of the pro-life cause is to save lives and while I think his comments are well-intended, they don’t reflect the realities of this case or the electorate,” the strategist said. “His comments open the door for swing district Republicans to be labeled as extremists, eroding the gains we have made with suburban women that will be crucial to winning in 2022 and 2024.”
For weeks, the widely held expectation among both Democratic and Republican political professionals had been that Roe would almost certainly not be enough to stop Republicans from gaining a majority in the House in November, but that it could limit their gains, scaring off moderates and suburban women.
Abortion still ranks below other issues — most of all, the economy — as a top priority of voters, and the electoral landscape is so bleak for Democrats this year that they are likely to sustain widespread losses regardless of fallout from Roe. By November, said Dave Carney, a national Republican strategist based in New Hampshire, “it’s not going to matter what Bopp or whatever … his name is says. It’s not going to trump 9.1 percent inflation.”
But abortion has been ticking up as a priority since the court’s ruling on Roe. And in close House races and statewide contests in swing states, even a shift at the margins may be consequential.
Sean Walsh, a Republican strategist who worked in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses, said the Indiana case will not only turn off moderate Republicans but will serve as a “motivator to get younger voters to vote — who usually are spotty in casting ballots.”
“It hurts because it sets the frames [of] the GOP position as ‘extreme,’” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “This particular case may not be remembered in a few weeks but the steady drip of stories coming will have a definite cumulative impact.”
For Republicans in Washington, focus on the most conservative elements of the party’s positioning on abortion may be unavoidable. Of the 13 states with trigger bans that have kicked in or are soon to in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, only five contain exceptions for rape or incest.
Mike O’Brien, an Indiana Republican operative and former legislative director for former Gov. Mitch Daniels, said the 10-year-old’s case is likely to focus the legislative debate on such exceptions.
“I suspect that those who were already hoping for a bill with exceptions will point to this as an example of a horrific situation where options are necessary,” he told POLITICO. “But legislators aren’t going to get off that easy with the Indiana pro-life lobby who already doubled down on a bill with no exceptions.”
In South Carolina, where lawmakers passed legislation in 2021 banning abortions after the detection of fetal cardiac activity, usually around six weeks of pregnancy, the legislature is considering going further. State Sen. Sandy Senn, the only Republican senator to vote against the measure, said she suspects many Republican women, like her, may be “pro-life” but “against forced birth” — she believes abortion should be legal through the first trimester. She says that harsher bans may spur voters to take it out on Republicans in November.
“Their voices might be heard at the ballot box when many women vote single issue on the abortion issue regardless of party affiliation,” Senn said. “It is nonsense to demand rape and incest victims, many of whom are children themselves, to carry children through birth just because a heartbeat is capable of detection.”
Even Republicans who oppose such exceptions are doubtful of the politics of it. South Carolina state Rep. John McCravy, who is chairing a special ad hoc committee on abortion, personally opposes exceptions in the case of rape or incest. But he isn’t sure whether his Republican colleagues feel the same way.
He said if legislation passes out of committee without rape and incest exceptions, he anticipates the vote could be much tighter than proponents may expect.
“If we get this bill through the Judiciary [Committee] and it’s got no exceptions in it, and it gets to the floor, I think it’ll be a close vote,” McCravy said.
Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, said he will press lawmakers in his state — who banned abortions after the detection of fetal cardiac activity in 2019 with no exceptions for rape and incest — to not change their minds on exceptions when they meet later this year.
Endorsed candidates, he said, signed surveys saying they wouldn’t support such exceptions. Gonidakis added that he believes the 10-year-old should have been able to legally receive an abortion under Ohio law because of the health risks of carrying a pregnancy to term at that age. But whether the law needs to be clarified to make that more explicit for doctors fearing prosecution is a question for state lawmakers, he said.
“That’s a policy decision we should discuss at the statehouse, both pro-choicers and pro-lifers. That’s why we have a legislature. Let’s go have that conversation and sit down and talk about it,” Gonidakis said.
In Indiana, Destiny Wells, a former deputy state attorney general who is also the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, said in an interview that she hoped the case would make anti-abortion lawmakers think twice about the impact of their legislation.
“I would hope that the state of Ohio expecting a 10-year-old to carry her rapist’s child being brought to national light would slow down anti-abortion legislation,” she said.
It’s unclear if it will. Spokespersons for both of Indiana’s state legislative chambers did not make any caucus members available for interviews to discuss whether the specific case would shape their legislative approach.
Asked whether the high-profile nature of the 10-year-old’s case complicated the path toward further abortion restrictions in the special session scheduled to begin July 25, a former longtime veteran Indiana GOP lawmaker told POLITICO: “I think everyone is aware of the case, but I don’t think it will be a driving factor.” He added that he expects exceptions ultimately to include rape, incest, and life of the mother.
“More important is how they seek to address pressure from interest groups on both sides of the issue,” he said, “whose viewpoints may not align with the majority sentiment of the general public.”
