Lauren Aratani
Mon, 14 August 2023
Photograph: Rogelio V Solis/AP
A 13-year-old girl in Mississippi gave birth to a boy after she was raped as well as impregnated by a stranger – and then was unable to get an abortion, according to a Time magazine report published on Monday.
The mother of the girl, who uses the pseudonym Ashley in the report, was looking to get an abortion for her daughter but was told the closest abortion provider was in Chicago – a drive of more than nine hours from their home in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Related: ‘Ohio saw through the con’: abortion rights advocates celebrate Issue 1 result
Ashley’s mother, referred to as Regina in the report, told Time that the cost of getting an abortion in Chicago was too expensive when considering the price of travel, taking time off work and getting the abortion for her daughter.
“I don’t have the funds for all this,” Regina told Time.
The report is the latest in a series of horrific personal accounts that have surfaced after the US supreme court overturned the nationwide abortion access rights which had been established by the Roe v Wade precedent. Since the decision, titled Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 14 state laws banning abortion have gone into effect, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The women’s health clinic that was at the center of the case was the last abortion provider in Mississippi until it closed last summer after the Dobbs decision.
Last summer, just a week after the ruling, a local newspaper in Ohio reported that a 10-year-old who was raped had to travel to Indiana for an abortion because of restrictions in her state. A man was found guilty last month of raping and impregnating the girl in that case, and he received a sentence of life imprisonment.
Other stories detail how women nearly died because doctors had to wait until their life was at risk to perform an abortion – or that many women now have to travel long distances to get any kind of reproductive healthcare. An estimated 25 million women ages 15 to 33 live in states that have abortion restrictions.
With respect to Monday’s Time report, Ashley discovered she was pregnant after her mother took her to the hospital for uncontrollable vomiting. Regina noticed that Ashley was behaving differently, staying in her room when she used to enjoy going outside to record TikTok dances. Upon receiving bloodwork showing Ashley was pregnant, the hospital contacted the police.
“What have you been doing?” a nurse asked Ashley at that time, according to the report. The hospital ultimately directed Ashley to the Clarksdale Women’s Clinic, which provides OB-GYN services. The clinic did not respond to requests from the Guardian for comment.
“It was surreal for her,” Dr Erica Balthrop, Ashley’s physician, told Time. “She just had no clue.”
Before Dobbs, Balthrop could have directed Regina to a Memphis abortion clinic that was a 90-minute drive north, or to Jackson Women’s Health, which is a 2.5-hour drive south. But Mississippi – along with all the states surrounding it – has banned abortion.
Mississippi, along with many other states that also ban abortions, technically make exceptions for when the pregnancy is from rape or is life-threatening. But abortions granted under these exceptions are extremely rare and poorly tracked.
In January, the New York Times reported that Mississippi made two exceptions since the state’s abortion ban went into effect. The state requires that a rape be reported to law enforcement in order to qualify for a legal abortion.
Two out of three sexual assault cases in the US are not reported to the police, according to Rainn, or the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, an anti-sexual assault nonprofit. Even if an exception is made, a person must travel out of their state to get an abortion procedure if their state bans it.
The laws exacerbate longstanding health inequalities in Mississippi, where Black women are four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications compared with white women, according to the state’s health department. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 60% of women who seek abortions are people of color and about half live below the federal poverty line.
Regina said she filed a complaint with the Clarksdale police department after she learned Ashley was pregnant. She told Time that her daughter ultimately opened up about what happened: a man came into their front yard while she was making TikToks outside while her uncle and sibling were inside and assaulted her. Ashley said she did not know who the man was and that no one witnessed the attack.
The police department confirmed to Time that a report had been filed. But the agency declined to comment publicly on the case since it involved a minor.
After 39 weeks of pregnancy, Ashley gave birth to a boy, whom they nicknamed Peanut. Ashley told Time the birth was “painful”.
“This situation hurts the most because it was an innocent child doing what children do, playing outside, and it was my child,” Regina told Time. “It still hurts, and is going to always hurt.”
A 13-year-old who couldn't get an abortion is now starting 7th grade as a mom, report says
Gabby Landsverk
Mon, 14 August 202
A young girl in Mississippi gave birth after being sexually assaulted by a stranger outside her home, Time reported.
Because of the state's strict abortion laws, the nearest abortion provider was 9 hours away.
Her doctor said the girl had "no clue" what was happening and didn't understand pregnancy.
A 13-year-old from Clarksdale, Mississippi will start seventh grade as a new mom after being sexually assaulted and unable to get access to an abortion, Time reported.
The girl, referred to by the pseudonym Ashley in the report to protect her privacy, was raped in autumn of 2022 and told no one for weeks, her mother Regina (also a pseudonym) told Time.
Regina had noticed something was wrong when Ashley lost interest in her usual hobbies, like TikTok dances, and had symptoms such as nausea. Regina said she hadn't even talked to her daughter about how babies are made because she felt Ashley was too young to understand, according to Time.
Despite severe trauma that left Ashley almost unable to speak, Regina later learned that Ashley had been assaulted by an unknown man while she had been outside their house.
Ashley was already 10 weeks pregnant by the time her pregnancy was discovered
Regina told Time that she brought Ashley to the emergency room on January 11, 2023 because she couldn't stop vomiting. While they were there, bloodwork showed that Ashley was 10 or 11 weeks pregnant.
"She just had no clue," Dr. Erica Balthrop, a provider at the Clarksdale Woman's Clinic and the OB-GYN on call, told Time.
Regina was told that the closest abortion provider was a nine-hour drive away in Chicago. But the family couldn't afford the cost of gas, food, or lodging along with the procedure itself and time off work to complete the journey.
Instead, the family did their best to disguise the fact that Ashley was pregnant with oversized clothes until it was too obvious to hide. Then they removed her from school, saying she needed surgery for an ulcer, Time reported.
Ashley completed sixth grade on her laptop, and gave birth to her son, nicknamed Peanut, on a Saturday when she was 39 weeks pregnant. Her mother told Time that she's working to get Ashley permission to start seventh grade from home, too.
Strict abortion laws disproportionately affect high-risk mothers, experts say
Mississippi's abortion laws are some of the most restrictive in the nation. On paper, they allow exceptions in the case of rape or if the mother's life is at risk, but the process for obtaining exemptions isn't clear, Time reported.
Mississippi also has high rates of poverty and maternal mortality. Black women in Mississippi are four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as white women, according to state Department of Health data. And pregnancy-related health complications are on the rise as a result of stricter bans on abortion, the Washington Post reported.
There are also few providers available in regions of the country where states have banned abortion, including Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama, following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Meanwhile, stricter laws are leading to significantly more births. But most people don't even realize they're pregnant until week seven, which is already too late to get an abortion in a dozen states.
Caitlin Cruz
Mon, August 14, 2023
Close-up of examination table in doctor's office
A 13-year-old girl in Mississippi gave birth this month after she was raped last fall, and just weeks before she will start 7th grade. When the pregnancy was first discovered at an emergency room earlier this year, her mother told Time magazine that a nurse reportedly asked the child, “What have you been doing?”
Ashley (a pseudonym to protect her privacy), is Black, and her story illustrates the horrific effects of abortion bans in already disadvantaged areas. She was raped last fall while filming a TikTok video in the yard of her family’s house in Clarksdale, while her relatives were inside. Her mother, who goes by the pseudonym Regina said, according to Time, that Ashley said “a man came down the street and into the front yard, grabbed Ashley, and covered her mouth...He pulled her around to the side of the house and raped her” and that the “assailant was an adult, and that she didn’t know him. Nobody else witnessed the assault.”
At the next appointment, Regina broached the subject of abortion. But it was early 2023: The world of abortion access is the South was already at a humanitarian-level crisis. The closest abortion provider was in Chicago. “I don’t have the funds for all this,” Regina told Time, referencing the need to take off work, pay for gas, food and lodging—as well as the abortion.
Ashley and Regina’s position is horrifically not unique: There are nearly 2 million people of reproductive age who live in a county without abortion or maternity care access, according to a new analysis from ABC News and Boston’s Children’s Hospital. If you zoom out a bit, to include counties that only have “low access” to maternal healthcare, these healthcare deserts now include 3.7 million women.
Obviously, Ashely didn’t get the abortion; that’s why you’re reading this story. She joined the growing number of people who are simply unable to make true choices of bodily autonomy. Having a child—even as a teen—should be a choice. Instead, Ashley was raped and forced to become a mother at age 13.
Ashley’s story is the inverse of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped by Gerson Fuentes in summer 2022. That girl was able to travel across state lines to Indiana to receive a medication abortion before she reached seven weeks. (Of course, she was forced to travel because Roe v. Wade was overturned, and her home state of Ohio implemented a six-week abortion ban shortly thereafter.) After the girl’s pregnancy from the rape was discovered, child protective services got involved. A child abuse doctor reached out to Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the abortion provider in Indiana. They made travel plans, and the girl received her abortion. Ashley was not so lucky.
She also experienced the all-too-common “adultification” bias, which treats Black children as more grown up than they are and, in this case, presumes immense responsibility when the nurse asked, “What have you been doing?”
Even though Regina filed a police report, and the family gave the name of a possible suspect, little has been done for Ashley’s case. Police only collected a DNA sample from the newborn child after Time made multiple inquiries. Time reported that the Clarksdale Police Chief Vincent Ramirez essentially shrugged when asked about the delay. “It’s a pretty high priority, as a juvenile,” he told the magazine. “Sometimes they slip a little bit because we’ve got a lot going on, but then they come back to it.”
This seems like a pretty big slip—especially because Ashley’s life has already been irrevocably changed.
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