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In fiery remarks about the future of abortion access in the United States, President Biden on Friday expressed outrage over the case of a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio who was forced to travel across the state line to have an abortion.
“She was forced to travel out of state to Indiana to terminate the pregnancy and possibly save her life,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “Ten years – 10 years! – raped, six weeks pregnant, already traumatized, forced to travel to another country.
The Indianapolis Star reported last week that three days after the Supreme Court rejected Roe v. Wade, an Ohio doctor who treats abused children called an Indianapolis-based obstetrician-gynecologist to tell her about the case of a 10-year-old rape victim who needed an abortion.
Ohio passed a law in 2019 that made abortion illegal around six weeks, when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Hours after the Supreme Court reversed Rowe, the Ohio law went into effect. At that point, the girl was six weeks and three days pregnant.
The Supreme Court ruling leaves states free to ban abortions
The Ohio doctor asked the Indiana doctor if there was anything they could do for the girl. Later, she was able to cross state lines to have an abortion under the care of the Indiana doctor.
While abortion before six weeks is still legal in Indiana, state lawmakers will meet later this month to consider further restrictions on abortion. According to the Indianapolis Star, abortion providers in the state are receiving more calls from out-of-state patients seeking abortion services.
Abortions performed on patients under 15 are rare in the country — in 2019, 0.2 percent of reported abortions were performed on patients that young, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As Biden retold the girl’s story on Friday, he became visibly upset. A 10-year-old girl, he said, should not be “forced to give birth to a rapist’s child.”
Biden’s focus on the child came shortly before he signed an executive order protecting abortion rights following the Supreme Court ruling. The administration has faced pressure from other Democrats to do more, but Biden has acknowledged that his executive power has limits.
The Supreme Court’s decision, he said, was “a terrible, extreme and, in my view, completely wrong decision.”
He added that he thought the court’s majority “played fast and loose with the facts” in its opinion, misrepresenting the history of abortion rights in America.
“I can’t think of anything more extreme than [the] a court decision,” Biden said emotionally.
Biden’s remarks on the 10-year-old’s case were a far cry from those of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), who focused on the criminal act, calling child sexual abuse a “tragedy,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, saying what the state has there, “obviously, [is] a rapist.”
“We have someone who is dangerous, and we have someone who needs to be caught and locked up forever,” DeWine said.
However, he did not comment on the Ohio law he signed that prohibits her from performing abortions in the state.
“It’s a terrible, terrible tragedy for a 10-year-old to be assaulted, for a 10-year-old to be raped,” DeWine said Wednesday, according to the Enquirer. “As a father and as a grandfather, it’s just excruciating to even think about.”
Ohio’s law was one of so-called trigger bans that went into effect in several states immediately after the court overturned Rowe.
Biden outlines new steps aimed at strengthening abortion rights
At the daily briefing after Biden’s speech, White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said the president discussed the girl’s case “just to show how extreme the decision to Dobbs the decision was also how extreme it is now for the American public.
“When you have a girl so young who has to carry the child of a rapist, it’s unacceptable,” said Jean-Pierre. “That’s why he’s calling for action. That is why he is trying to do the best he can with the legal powers he has.
Biden, Jean-Pierre said, “will do everything he can to protect young people who are like this young girl.”
“But at the same time, he’s going to call it out and use his pulpit to make it clear that what’s going on there is unacceptable,” she added.
During his remarks on Friday, the president also warned of a future in which Republicans in Congress would feel emboldened to pass a national abortion ban. Such a measure, he said, would not become law under his watch because he would veto it.
“We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court, working in concert with extremist elements of the Republican Party, to take away our freedoms and personal autonomy,” he said.
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