The right denied the story of a 10-year-old getting an abortion - it only gets worse

[marmar]

The right denied the story of a 10-year-old getting an abortion – it only gets worse
Arwa Mahdawi

The Wall Street Journal called the horrifying ordeal ‘too good to confirm’, but no apologies came when a 27-year-old was arrested for the crime
Sat 16 Jul 2022 09.00 EDT


(Guardian UK) The right think a child being raped is ‘too good to confirm’
Here’s a sentence nobody should ever have to write: a 10-year-old Ohio girl was raped and then had to flee her state in order to have a safe and legal abortion. Instead of reacting with horror, Republican politicians and the rightwing media’s first instinct was to claim the story, first published by the Indianapolis Star on July 1, was fake news. On Monday, for example, Ohio attorney general Dave Yost told Fox News that “Every day that goes by the more likely that this [story] is a fabrication … shame on the Indianapolis paper that ran this thing on a single source who has an obvious axe to grind.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the incident “not true” and his colleague Jesse Watters suggested it was a hoax.

It wasn’t just rightwingers who doubted the veracity of the story: corners of the mainstream media also rushed to question it. The Wall Street Journal published an article from its editorial board with the headline: “An Abortion Story Too Good to Confirm”. Too good to confirm. They used those words to describe a 10-year-old being raped and not being able to get an abortion in her home state of Ohio, which has banned abortions after six weeks, with no exceptions for rape and incest. Too good to confirm!

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler also heavily insinuated that the story was made up by anti-abortion activists in a ‘fact-checking’ column headlined “A one-source story about a 10-year-old and an abortion goes viral.” Kessler took issue with the fact that the Indianapolis Star only cited one source for the story about the 10-year-old: an obstetrician-gynecologist called Caitlin Bernard, who goes on the record. Adding to Kessler’s seeming cynicism about the incident is the fact, he writes, that “an abortion of a 10-year-old is pretty rare”. In the very next sentence, however, he notes that “The Columbus Dispatch reported that in 2020, 52 people under the age of 15 received an abortion in Ohio.” That is ONCE A WEEK. How on earth can that be considered “rare”? (Kessler later said on Twitter that he regretted using the word “rare.”)

It would have been far better if the horrific story had been a hoax rather than a vulnerable young child’s reality. But, on Wednesday, a 27-year-old man was charged with the rape. Did all the naysayers apologize? Of course not. Fox News shrugged their shoulders and moved on. Kessler, meanwhile, responded to criticism of his column with a snarky tweet. “The last line of this fact check was: ‘If a rapist is ever charged, the fact finally would have more solid grounding,’” Kessler wrote. “Now, a rapist has been charged and the story has been updated. Getting lots of angry emails but journalism is an accumulation of facts.” .............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/16/rightwing-rape-abortion-10-year-old-worse

[Blue Owl]

1. Fuck those depraved woman/girl/female-killers

FUCK THEM.