Opinion: Why a 10-year-old rape victim had to travel out of state for an abortion

We told you this would happen if Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Conservatives pushed through their ideological agendas anyway, and now, here we are watching a child rape victim travel from Ohio to Indiana for an abortion, while her story is questioned for political points by right-wing media pundits and politicians.

When I sat down to write a column about this 10-year-old rape victim having to travel across state lines for an emergency abortion, I had just dropped my 6- and 4-year-old daughters off at summer school.

And I felt numb.

Mother and rape survivor

As a mother of two young girls who, God forbid, are ever violated in any way – I felt numb.

As a survivor of sexual abuse, and a rape survivor, I felt numb.

As a feminist and human rights advocate who has dedicated her life to advancing the rights of vulnerable people around the world and in my country, I felt numb.

I tried to write but couldn't get past two questions I had typed on my otherwise blank screen:

1. Did the people who advocated for repealing abortion rights anticipate that 10-year-old children might be forced to give birth in states where the laws do not allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest? If so, how do they sleep at night?

2. Have my daughters inherited a country where states force child rape victims to give birth?

The answer to both is emphatically, and tragically, "yes."

Victimized and revictimized

Six weeks and three days.

That's how far along in her pregnancy a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio was when she was referred to Dr. Caitlin Bernard in Indianapolis by a treating physician in Ohio. The Ohio doctor reached out to the Indiana OB/GYN because — thanks to the Supreme Court's decision to take away the constitutionally protected right to abortion that had existed in the United States for nearly 50 years — this child rape victim had no right to a legal abortion in her home state.

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Her cycle of tragedy was as follows:

►First she was raped as a child.

►Then she got pregnant.

►Then she couldn't have an abortion in her home state, because it was banned after six weeks with no exception for rape and incest or fatal fetal anomalies, and so the girl was forced to gather the resources, and courage, to travel across state lines for the procedure.

►Then a public official stated that he didn't believe her story, casting doubt, as if it were a game, on one of the worst tragedies known to human suffering: child sexual abuse. The state attorney general said, in an interview with the USA TODAY Network Ohio bureau on Tuesday, "What I'm saying to you is there is not a damn scintilla of evidence. And shame on the Indianapolis paper that ran this thing on a single source who has an obvious axe to grind."

He was wrong.

►Now, the child is being used as a pawn in the political back and forth between people who have long argued about a person's right to bodily autonomy and are now arguing about a child's right to be free of her rapist's legacy.

What's worse? What happened to this child is just the beginning, and advocates like me have been warning about it for months, if not years.

In Indiana, for instance, rape victims and people looking to terminate unwanted pregnancies likely won't be able to travel there from, say Ohio, for abortion care, because that state is likely to pass highly restrictive abortion laws in the coming days.

This is a tragedy we will see again and again on the national stage as trigger laws and pre-Roe bans go into effect across the country, heavily restricting abortion access in a patchwork legal framework that doctors, advocates and patients are frantically trying to navigate.

An arrest does not a remedy make

The accused attacker of the Ohio girl has been arrested. Thank God for that. But in the big picture, for sexual abuse victims and abortion advocates, it means absolutely nothing.

According to RAINN, an organization dedicated to sexual abuse victims and child sexual abuse, 1 in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys "under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult."

What is to happen to those children if they are unlucky enough to be raped in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio – all states with laws pending or already on the books that do not allow for abortion even in cases of rape or incest?

As the nation continues to wrestle with the fallout of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, girls like this poor 10-year-old will have to try to somehow heal themselves from unspeakable evils, as well as being revictimized by the state for political points.

And while I'm still numb to the idea that this is what the country has become, I can't shake the idea that we tried to warn against this very moment and were ignored. We told you.

Carli Pierson, a New York licensed attorney, is an opinion writer with USA TODAY and a member of the USA TODAY Editorial Board. Follow her on Twitter: @CarliPiersonEsq

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Why a 10-year-old rape victim had to flee Ohio for abortion