Indiana’s Republican attorney general said on Wednesday that his office planned to investigate an Indianapolis-based abortionist who performed the procedure on a ten-year-old rape victim from Ohio.
“We’re gathering the evidence as we speak, and we’re going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure if she failed to report. And in Indiana it’s a crime … to intentionally not report,” Attorney General Todd Rokita said on Fox News on Wednesday night. “This is a child, and there’s a strong public interest in understanding if someone under the age of 16 or under the age of 18 or really any woman is having abortion in our state. And then if a child is being sexually abused, of course parents need to know. Authorities need to know. Public policy experts need to know.”
The obstetrician-gynecologist, Doctor Caitlin Bernard, claims a child-abuse doctor in Ohio asked her to help the young girl get an abortion in Indiana given restrictions in her home state.
Ohio’s pro-life law, the enactment of which was triggered by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, technically prohibits most abortions after six weeks of gestation. The cut-off time to obtain an abortion in Indiana is longer at 22 weeks, with some exceptions for medical emergencies.
Bernard claims the child was six weeks and three days into the pregnancy when she administered the abortion. The call to Bernard from the Ohio child-abuse doctor was allegedly made three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the Indianapolis Star reported.
Ohio attorney general Dave Yost has since clarified that his state’s law has a “medical-emergency exception broader than just the life of the mother. This young girl, if she exists and if this horrible thing actually happened to her . . . she did not have to leave Ohio” to receive an abortion.
For days, speculation swirled in the media about the credibility of the account of the young girl conceiving after being raped and then traveling to undergo an abortion. Many pundits and representatives were skeptical of the story given that it relied upon a single source — Bernard — and did not make any mention of a law enforcement probe, which should have been immediately triggered after a medical professional learned of the rape.
However, on Wednesday the perpetrator was identified as 27-year-old Gershon Fuentes, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who confessed to raping the ten-year-old girl on at least two occasions, according to the Columbus Dispatch. He was arrested, charged with rape, and detained on $2 million bond, the publication reported.