Ghastly Ohio case shows how abortion also would be banned for raped 10-year-old in Arizona
When six members of the U.S. Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade, I wonder if the justices could have imagined the cruel and unnecessary trauma they were inflicting on a little girl in Ohio.
I hope so.
I hope it made them sick, though I doubt it.
The appalling decision to overturn Roe allowed “trigger laws” like Ohio’s previously unconstitutional six-week abortion ban to go into effect. That meant a 10-year-old rape victim in that state was denied an abortion because she was pregnant for three days past the six-week ban.
She’s 10.
As a result, this little girl and her family were forced to seek help in neighboring Indiana, where abortion services are still available.
For now.
It's bad in Ohio, worse in Arizona
Anyone with compassion would be hard pressed to imagine living in a state that purposefully treats a brutalized child rape victim so callously. Then again, compassionate men and women in Arizona do not need to imagine it.
Because the law in Arizona is worse.
Back to the 1800s: Democrats blast Brnovich's backing of abortion law
According to Attorney General Mark Brnovich, the Supreme Court’s decision triggered a pre-statehood territorial abortion ban in Arizona that reads:
“A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years.”
It has no exceptions for rape or incest victims.
It does not consider the victim’s age.
The worst possible justification
In the aftermath of the Roe decision, many states controlled by Republican legislatures are going this route, even though nearly 80% of Americans – Democrats, Republicans and everyone in between – believe there should be exceptions for rape and incest.
Anti-abortion activists increasingly do not accept that. Exceptions for rape and incest are humane and just, but they also poke holes in the anti-abortion movement’s extremist rationale that everything after conception – from zygote on – should be granted legal status as a person. It’s why so many right-wing lawmakers also are talking about passing laws to ban Plan B medication, the so-called morning after pill.
The justification given for the no exception rule is that only a small percentage of rape or incest victims become pregnant.
Seriously.
Could there be a more twisted argument from individuals proclaiming themselves to be pro-life?
And what it means, essentially, is that the case of the little girl in Ohio is not a sickening anomaly.
It’s just the first.
Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ohio abortion case is bad but worse in Arizona for a raped 10-year-old
