I would call this a new low, but...

There will be an even lower low any minute now

You knew it was going to happen, and now here it is:  the right-wing noise machine swung into full-power mode after it was reported that a 10-year-old girl who was raped in Ohio had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion.  The story was first reported in the Indianapolis Star by Shari Rudavsky, who has been the paper’s lead health reporter for something like 18 years. 

There was no reason to doubt the report.  It was printed in a first-line municipal newspaper by a reporter well known in the city of Indianapolis.  Even before the Supreme Court handed down its Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade and returning control of abortion laws to the states, it was predicted that an underage girl would someday be raped and be caused to go somewhere other than her home state to obtain an abortion because red states almost immediately began passing laws outlawing abortion the day the court issued its decision.

That was what happened in Ohio.  Soon after the Dobbs decision was announced, Governor Mike DeWine ordered that a law would go into effect banning abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy.  The law had been passed in 2019 and sat dormant until the Supreme Court decided Dobbs.  By the time the little girl in Ohio discovered that the rape she had suffered had made her pregnant, she was three days past the deadline.

The story didn’t set off any alarm bells until this Tuesday when the Wall Street Journal published an editorial essentially calling the story about the 10-year-old girl a lie.  “There is no evidence the girl exists,” the editorial said.  Despite first-hand reporting in the Indianapolis Star from an interview with the Indianapolis doctor who performed the abortion, the editorial called the story “a fanciful tale.”

Fox News jumped right on it.  Tucker Carlson went on his show and said the story was “not true.”   Another Fox News host claimed that abortion rights activists were lying about a “fake victim.”  A jerk named Dave Yost, who somehow got himself elected attorney general of Ohio, went on another Fox show and called the story about the 10-year-old rape victim from his state – whose rapist he should have been pursuing and prosecuting – “a fabrication” and claimed there was no “evidence” to support the story.

There was a serious problem with the Ohio attorney general’s blithe assertion that the whole thing about the 10-year-old girl was made up.  A 27-year-old Ohio man was arrested on Tuesday and charged with raping the girl.  According to a report in the Columbus Dispatch, the rapist, one Carlos Fuentes, admitted to raping the girl at least two times.  The Dispatch reported that a detective testified at the man’s arraignment yesterday that Columbus police had been aware of the rape since June 22 when her mother had called Child Protective Services.  The detective went on to confirm that on June 30, the 10-year-old girl had a “medical abortion” in Indianapolis. 

Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan got his two cents in with a Tuesday Tweet claiming that the Ohio attorney general’s office had “not found any evidence of a 10-year-old rape victim in the state.”  He then took a swat at President Biden for referring to the story in a statement he made on Monday, implying that Biden had lied.

When the rapist was arrested, Jordan deleted the tweet without an apology to either the 10-year-old rape victim or Biden.

I am going to pause here for a moment because I just realized that I have typed the words “10-year-old girl” seven times.  It becomes almost automatic in a story like this where you have to mention the subject of the story over and over.

She is 10-years-old and she was raped twice and before she is old enough to go to junior high school, she has had to have an abortion.

Think about it for a moment.  Not only is she going to live with the fact of the rapes and the fact of the abortion for the rest of her life, these stories saying it was all a lie, that she was a “fake victim,” will be on the internet and on social media forever.  Her children will be able to read the lies about her, and so will her grandchildren.  And what they will read will be disgusting lies perpetrated by disgusting people without a thought in the world about the girl, or her life today, or what her life will someday become.

They are spreading disgusting lies to get votes, that’s what they’re doing, and they are willing to ruin a 10-year-old girl’s life to do it.

Today, another disgusting Republican jerk, the Attorney General of Indiana, decided they haven’t gone far enough in trashing the girl and he made the astonishing announcement that his office was opening an investigation of the doctor who performed the abortion on the 10-year-old rape victim. 

You would think that the right wing would try to crawl under a rock when a story proved to be true about the nightmare scenario that was predicted to happen after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.  But no.  First, they call the girl who was raped a liar, then they shame her for traveling across state lines to abort the fetus produced by the rape, then they go after the doctor who performed a legal abortion on her so she would not have to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

It's a Republican trifecta:  cruelty dipped in lies ladled on top of an abuse of power. 

Watch this space.  Republicans are going to do it again.  And again.  And again.