So by now we’ve all heard the viral story about the pregnant 10 year-old Ohio girl who had to travel to the liberal bastion of Indiana in order to have her condition treated. After the story garnered national attention, because sane Americans recognized that requiring a 10-year-old to carry her rapist’s baby was a bad outcome, Republicans had to come up with a counter-talking point. Falling back on their traditional tactics when reality is against them, they blamed the victim. Since the 10-year-old was anonymous, and thus unavailable for attack, they questioned her existence entirely, stating that the whole thing was a conspiracy by the liberal media to make them look bad.
That seemed a pretty effective diversion. GQP don’t like the media, and accusing the child victims of GOP policy of non-existence is now a time-honored tradition in GQP circles. Unfortunately for them, reality has struck back, and more details have been released, proving that in fact the girl did exist, as an actual arrest has now been made in the case.
www.dispatch.com/…
Of course that doesn’t matter. In a bizarre twist the GQP care about nothing so much as protecting imaginary children from imaginary crimes, while doing nothing to protect actual children from the actual tragedies inherent to their policies. The existence of a ten-year-old who had to cross state lines to seek an abortion is merely tangential to the abortion debate. Regardless of her existence, are GQP politicians denying that underage girls do get pregnant in this country? Are they denying that under Ohio law, the victim would be forced to leave the state to seek treatment? Are they denying that that is the effect, in fact, the very purpose of the laws that they so triumphantly passed?
Not that we’ll ever hear back from them on this point. Denying the girl existed was just an easy way to deflect from the real issues at hand. Never mind that their objection made no sense. I’m sure they will fall back on their next hand-wringing platitude: the real problem is child-rape and the rapist is now prosecuted, so the system worked. The whole situation is bad, but we can’t protect one child by killing another. Well, she got her abortion in the end, so isn’t it really a win-win?
I’m looking forward to hearing back from Mike DeWine, JD Vance, Dave Yost, Jon Husted and the collective right wing blog-o-sphere. But I’m sure the most they will remember about their callous attacks will be “We were just asking questions. What’s wrong with that?”