The court system seemed to handle it well.......
Man gets life sentence for raping 9-year-old Ohio girl who traveled to Indiana for legal abortion
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man who confessed to raping and impregnating a 9-year-old Ohio girl has been sentenced to life in prison in a case that became a national flashpoint on abortion rights because the girl had to travel out of state to end the pregnancy.
Gerson Fuentes, 28, was sentenced to life in prison, but his plea deal stipulates that he can seek parole after serving 25 to 30 years. He would then have to register as a sex offender.
Common Pleas Court Judge Julie Lynch, who was not required to approve the plea agreement, said the girl’s family “begged” the judge to back it. Lynch called the deal a “very hard pill for this court to swallow.”
“Anyone who’s ever been in this courtroom for the last 20 years knows how this court feels about these babies, young people, being violated,” Lynch said. “However, today, by the request of the family, this court will be sentencing without comment.”
The maximum sentence would have been life without parole. Settling the case before trial will spare the survivor from having to testify in court.
Zachary Olah, an attorney who represented Fuentes, told The Columbus Dispatch after the hearing that his client has been cooperative since the beginning.
“He was anxious to get this resolved,” Olah said.
The girl, who turned 10 before having the abortion, confirmed that Fuentes attacked her, Franklin County prosecutors have said, and Fuentes confessed to Columbus police detectives. DNA testing of the aborted fetus confirmed Fuentes was the father, prosecutors said.
Fuentes, who is from Guatemala and was living in Columbus, had been held without bond since his arrest. If he eventually wins parole, he would likely be deported given that authorities have said they have not found any evidence he is authorized to live in the U.S. legally.
The case gained national attention after Dr. Caitlin Bernard of Indianapolis said a 10-year-old child had to travel to Indiana to terminate a pregnancy because Ohio banned the procedure at the first detectable fetal heartbeat. Some 25 states have banned or restricted abortion since the Supreme Court struck down Roe, though many of the new laws are still being litigated.
Indiana’s state Medical Licensing Board voted in May to reprimand Bernard, finding that she violated patient privacy laws when she told a newspaper reporter about the case, even without revealing directly protected information like the survivor’s name or address.
The board rejected accusations from Indiana’s Republican attorney general that Bernard violated state law by not reporting the child abuse to Indiana authorities. Board members also rejected a request to suspend the doctor’s medical license. Instead, it fined Bernard $3,000 for the violations, but issued no restrictions on her practicing medicine. —- This story corrects the summary to reflect that Fuentes will be eligible for parole, not probation.
https://apnews.com/article/gerson-f...6zWlXn8ePDt-p3EBUhyeySC_e9iISiBhincpgzmoSome others? Not so well......
The GOP's shameless lies about a 10-year-old rape victim speak volumes
The Wall Street Journal and Republicans alike cast doubt on an all too common occurrence.
Last week, President Joe Biden used a speech on the end of Roe v. Wade to draw attention to the cruelty of abortion bans. The most attention-grabbing section of his address focused on the heart-wrenching case of a 10-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion in Ohio.
Since then, the girl’s case has been the subject of speculation, lies and callous disregard from Republicans and conservative media. But what happened to this young girl in Ohio isn’t what happens when anti-abortion Republicans are overzealous — it’s what happens when their plan is perfectly executed.
The media firestorm surrounding the girl’s case came to a head on Wednesday, when The Wall Street Journal editorial board ran a piece that described reports of the 10-year-old as “fanciful” and an “unlikely story.” The headline alone is enough to sicken anyone who cares about the safety of children, calling a girl impregnated by a rapist trapped in a state that bans abortion, “An Abortion Story Too Good to Confirm.”
A lot of words come to mind when I think about the lifelong trauma of your government forcing you to carry your rapist’s child when you yourself are still a child, but “good” isn’t one of them. “What we seem to have here is a presidential seal of approval on an unlikely story from a biased source that neatly fits the progressive narrative but can’t be confirmed,” the WSJ editorial board wrote.
Previously, Fox News called the rape victim’s story a hoax. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost called it a “fabrication” without bothering to explain his reasoning. And in a since-deleted tweet, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, encouraged his followers to question the validity of the child’s story. As the executive editor of Vanity Fair tweeted: “Doxxing a 10yo rape victim is actually quite literally what the WSJ is calling for."
Hours after the Journal’s editorial went live, The Indianapolis Star and The Columbus Dispatch reported that a man had been arrested and charged with raping the girl, silencing many of the critics. But it bears repeating that the girl that these powerful mostly male lawmakers and journalists were attacking is 10 years old. As Alyssa Rosenberg noted at The Washington Post, she is old enough to watch Pixar movies, but still too young for Marvel movies. She probably just got permission to cross the street without adult supervision and she is about to learn about fractions and solve problems with decimal points. She’s still considered by most parents to be too young to have a phone. A 10-year-old girl isn’t old enough to go to Disneyland by herself — but the Republican Party seems to think she’s old enough to become a mother.
In trying to dissuade the public that the story was false, Republicans inadvertently highlighted the horrifying truth: The harrowing tale of an abused child forced to carry a rapist’s baby to term is not an accidental quirk in the abortion bans they’re passing. It’s what they were designed to do. Ohio, like most states with new abortion bans, deliberately makes no exceptions for rape or incest. The lack of provisions to protect rape victims is not an omission, it’s premeditated.
When pressed on the viciousness of their anti-abortion laws, Republicans in various states openly admit to it. After Roe was overturned, Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn told a reporter he believes that a 12-year-old girl should be coerced to give birth to her father or uncle’s child. It’s a view shared by JD Vance, who is running for the GOP nomination for an Ohio Senate seat, and who thinks the state should force victims to bear children from rape. “The question to me is really about the baby,” he said. “Two wrong don’t make a right.” Also in Ohio, state representative Jean Schmidt recently argued rape victims should be denied an abortion because a baby created from rape could end up curing cancer.
Other Republicans have preferred to unfurl lies about female bodies having a supernatural ability to avoid pregnancy from rape altogether, which is of course, fallacious. In Virginia, GOP congressional candidate Yesli Vega doubted a woman or girl can get pregnant from rape based on her estimation of the average length of rape. “The individual, the male, is doing it as quickly [as possible],” she asininely explained.
Of course, rapists often impregnate their victims. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3 million women in the United States will become pregnant from rape. Twenty percent reported that their rapist actively tried to get them pregnant by refusing to wear a condom or controlling their birth control intake. For many rapists, pregnancy is not just a consequence, it’s the point. Sexual and reproductive violence are often intertwined and perpetrators use both to damage their victims, which makes these myths Republicans are spreading that much more deranged.
During debate on a bill in Oklahoma, Republican Sen. Warren Hamilton appeared disgruntled the law permitted abortion when a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, which is never viable and is life-threatening. This stands in sharp contrast with the American public with more than 85% of people believing in abortion in all or some cases, especially when the life of the mother is in jeopardy.
What needs to be made clear from this ghoulish exercise is that it’s not one child who will be raped and forced by the state to have a baby with a rapist, it will be hundreds or thousands. If abortion bans stay in place or get worse as Republicans say they want, the fate of this 10-year-old girl in Ohio will be the fate of many more little girls.
It’s not just women and birthing people who no longer have bodily autonomy, it’s children who happen to be born girls, too. Even girls with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis are forced to prove they’re not pregnant to get access to the drugs they need. Overturning Roe has endangered women, but the effect on young girls is deeply distressing given that pregnancy in children is more dangerous than it is for women and is a global leading cause of death for teenage girls. Any government banning girls from receiving abortions is a form of state-sponsored sexual violence. Forced pregnancy is a crime against girls, and a crime against girls is a crime against humanity.
All children are born vulnerable, but in a country with abortion bans, girls are in peril. Girls don’t have a powerful lobby. But those who doubted the veracity of her experience just made her strength that much more palpable, her resilience that much more salient in contrast with the cowardice of grown-ups desperate to take her bodily freedom away from her. If those in power had even an ounce of her courage, maybe they wouldn’t need to make up lies about hers.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc...-after-rape-shows-real-harm-gop-n129730815 states with new or impending abortion limits have no exceptions for rape, incest
More than 75% of Americans support allowing legal abortions in cases of rape and incest, but many new or forthcoming laws include no such exceptions.
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/post-roe-v-wade-state-bans-no-exceptions-rape-incest/
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