At Least 2 More Underage Rape Victims, 2 Pregnant Cancer Patients Denied Abortions in Ohio
A 10-year-old rape victim made national headlines in July when she revealed that she had to travel to Indiana for an abortion because of Ohio’s six-week abortion ban. A new affidavit filed in the ongoing legal battle against Ohio’s ban (on hold until October 12) reveals that the child wasn’t alone: According to abortion providers in the state, there have been at least two additional cases of minors who were impregnated by rape being denied abortion care, and two documented cases of pregnant cancer patients who couldn’t get abortions and thus couldn’t receive chemotherapy.
The affidavit states that three separate women in Ohio who were denied abortion care threatened to end their own lives due to the stress of carrying unwanted pregnancies. One woman was so sick from pregnancy that she couldn’t leave the clinic floor, and at least three others had to stay pregnant despite having foetal abnormalities that rendered their pregnancies nonviable. In 2019, Republican Governor Mike
DeWine signed a ban on abortion that didn’t take effect until after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. Notably, the law does not make any exceptions for victims of rape and only permits abortions in cases where the mother’s life is in imminent danger, a provision that is both highly medically risky and dangerously arbitrary, and which obviously did not help the aforementioned cancer patients.
A New York woman in chronic, debilitating pain was denied medication that could cause birth defects because she was of “childbearing age,” and a Louisiana woman was forced to carry a skullless, nonviable foetus. These are just two examples of the horrific ripple effects inflicted by the overturning of Roe v. Wade on the healthcare system, which we have witnessed for months. At one point, rape victims in Kansas City weren’t receiving plan B from the public health system.
The rape of a 10-year-old boy in Columbus, Ohio, grabbed the attention of many people because of the shocking nature of the crime. However, this case was only the tip of the iceberg in Ohio. Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio’s chief medical officer, Dr. Adarsh E. Krishen, testified in an affidavit that a minor who had been impregnated as a result of sexual assault had to go to Michigan to have an abortion.
Krishen wrote that the patient had been through “immense trauma” as a result of the assault itself and then “further trauma” from a forensic interview and physical exam conducted to gather evidence for the ongoing police investigation. These shocks Similar to the 10-year-old, “a 16-year-old girl living in Southwestern Ohio who had become pregnant after being sexually assaulted by a family member” had to travel to Indiana for abortion, according to a report written by Aeran Trick, operations manager of Women’s Med Center of Dayton.
Trick elaborated, saying that the local Ohio law enforcement agency — which was already involved by the time the clinic was contacted about the patient — had to travel to our Indianapolis clinic to retrieve the tissue for crime lab testing related to the sexual assault investigation. According to an affidavit filed by Dr. Sharon Liner, medical director of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio in Cincinnati, a pregnant woman with cancer whose chemotherapy had to be paused due to her pregnancy
sought and was denied abortion care, despite the supposed exception in Ohio law for threats to the pregnant person’s life. Trick also described her efforts to aid a pregnant woman with stage III melanoma who, because of the pregnancy, was unable to continue receiving treatment. They both had to seek treatment in other states. Obviously, the patient wouldn’t die right then and there if she couldn’t get her chemotherapy because she had to keep the baby, but she would end up dying much, much sooner. “Maybe significantly sooner, decades sooner,” Nisha Verma, a Georgia-based abortion provider, told Jezebel in July about a patient who needed an abortion so she could begin chemotherapy.
Liner claims that her clinic “had to cancel over 600 [abortion] appointments” after SB23 went into effect. She went on, “At least three patients have threatened to commit suicide. Another patient disclosed her plan to try to induce labour by ingesting bleach to end the pregnancy. Yet another wanted to know, “How much vitamin C do I need to take to get pregnant?” The stories may be tragic, but I don’t think they’ll have any effect on Governor DeWine or someone like him.
DeWine and other top Republicans tried to discredit the 10-year-old rape victim’s story after it gained national attention, going so far as to threaten legal action against the Indiana doctor who treated the child. Others among the anti-abortion movement argued that the situation was fine and that we should accept the fact that children impregnated through rape are raising their own children. was made worse by having to wait more than three weeks for her appointment.
