"The rape of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had reportedly traveled to Indiana for an abortion is not the only case of a minor who had to cross state lines in the wake of a state law banning virtually all forms of the procedure, health providers say.
In affidavits filed this month included as part of a lawsuit challenging the Ohio law — which went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion — two separate providers said they each had a case in which a minor was sexually assaulted and had to travel out of state to terminate their pregnancies.
Aeran Trick, the operations manager of the Women’s Med Center of Dayton, said that they were contacted in July about a 16-year-old in southwest Ohio who had been sexually assaulted, allegedly by a family member.
The girl could not legally access an abortion in Ohio 'due to the presence of fetal heart tones,' Trick said, so she traveled to Indianapolis, where the center operates a sister clinic. Law enforcement in Ohio was aware of the case, Trick added, and they had to go to Indianapolis to retrieve tissue to be tested as part of a sexual assault investigation.
...In another case, a minor who was sexually assaulted was taken to Michigan by her mother for an abortion, according to an affidavit by Dr. Adarsh Krishen, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, which is a plaintiff in the suit.
'This patient experienced immense trauma from the assault itself and then endured further trauma from a forensic interview alongside a physical exam to collect evidence for the ongoing police investigation,' Krishen said in the affidavit. 'This trauma was further exacerbated by needing to wait over 3 weeks for her appointment. In each step of this process she felt the complete denial of bodily autonomy and safety, something that all people, especially children, should unequivocally have at all times.'”
Learn more about this topic from VAWnet's special collection, Reproductive Justice & Violence Against Women.
