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Abortion, Propaganda, and Cynicism
A doctor in Ohio decided to become an abortion propagandist, assisted by journalists who decided to become abortion propagandists.
You must have seen the horrific story, reported out of Ohio. A ten-year-old child became pregnant through sexual abuse. Under the new post-Roe abortion laws she is ineligible for a termination because she was found to be six weeks and three days pregnant. The unnamed doctor called a named abortionist in next-door Indiana where abortions can currently be performed past six weeks and began the process of arranging the abortion. Someone took the story to the press, where it quickly became a front-page Handmaidens Tale-level news item, the near-perfect example of everything wrong with overturning Roe v. Wade. Almost too good (too evil?) to be true.
The victim was very young, below the average age of menses. She was pregnant via child abuse, the act itself horrific, with suggestions in the press the attacker was a relative. Ohio had just revised its laws following Dobbs (a month earlier and none of this would have been national news) and the kicker, the girl was six weeks and three days pregnant via abuse, just that 72 hours past Ohio’s deadline, all at obviously no fault of her own. Her only hope was an out-of-state abortion in next-door Indiana before it changed its own laws.
No current technology can calculate pregnancy to the day. Instead a standard estimate is used, calculated from the first day of the person‘s last period. The key term here is estimate; only a tiny percentage of babies (about four percent) are born on the exact due date calculated off that last period, assuming a ten-year-old abuse victim would know the first day of her last period precisely. The articles about the child don’t mention it, but the period date is usually adjusted by an ultrasound scan, where another estimate is made, based on the size of the fetus, with practice being if the two “due dates” differ by a week or more, the scan is taken as the more accurate measure.
The critical point is no one in the world could say that child was exactly three days past Ohio’s six week abortion deadline. The original doctor, sympathetic, could have easily consulted an ultrasound and come to the conclusion that she was instead five weeks and four days pregnant, for example, and eligible for an abortion. Ohio allows a complex exception for abortions even now when the mother’s life is in danger, clearly an option given the unlikelihood that a ten-year-old body would be able to successfully mature and birth a baby without injuring severely the child-mother.
The broader point is none of this was discussed in the articles pointing out the horror Ohio was visiting on an abuse victim. None of the media asked the original doctor why he did not see the fetus as less than six weeks old, or why he did not seek to invoke the exception for a mother’s life at stake. Instead, he and the abortionist in Indiana worked hand-in-hand with the media to shape the narrative as ammunition pro-choice advocates would be able to use. It was all too perfect.
Newly-restored to Twitter, I voiced some of these ideas. The story was obvious propaganda, albeit apparently true on its basic facts if not fudged on its presentation and omissions. As propaganda it seemed worth talking about. But in America we can’t talk about abortion it seems.
The first wave of comments from anonymous women (I am unsure enough of the mechanics of Twitter to not know how non-followers ended up seeing my Tweets) included some personal insults but were more in line with claiming I wanted to make the story about me (for having a questioning opinion as a man) and not about the “woman.” These were followed by many more anonymous women criticizing me as a male for not knowing much about women’s bodies because I asked some pointed questions about how much faith the doctor in question put in judging the pregnancy at six weeks and three days. Could someone really make a life-or-death decision for one of his patients based when a period had occurred? Someone whose bio says she is a doctor and activist seemed to lead the charges against me, calling me a whiner for wondering why this anger was directed at me and not maybe at some people in Ohio. And why was it impossible to find out anything about the attacker, such as if he was in jail?
In the end I was told to “Just tweet, ‘I’m a twatwaffle who doesn’t know anything about women’ and save us all some time” and that seemingly ended the discussion.
The Ohio case has become a test for politicians forced to show they are sensitive to the needs of women and girls in the face of growing restrictions on abortion. Republican governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, mentioned as a potential running mate for Donald Trump, was pressed on the Ohio case on CNN, though no mention was made that South Dakota, like Ohio, allows abortions when a mother’s life is in danger. Instead the situation was visioned as “child rapist gets away with horror because abortion laws are too restrictive.” Noem replied: “I don’t believe a tragic situation should be perpetuated by another tragedy. There’s more that we have got to do to make sure that we really are living a life that says every life is precious, especially innocent lives that have been shattered, like that 10-year-old girl,” she said.
It is a gross coincidence this playbook has been run before. In May 2019 as Ohio was considering its fetal heartbeat law, the press came up with an 11-year-old girl has been raped and impregnated by a 26-year-old man who had sex with her on multiple occasions as someone who might be forced to carry to term by the new law. The heartbeat law passed anyway.
And by no small accident the Indiana General Assembly will convene in special session later in July to discuss what restrictions to abortion policy it will implement post-Roe as Indiana law did not immediately change when the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision. The state currently allows for abortions in the case of rape or incest. One wonder on the effect propaganda will have on all that, with the insertion of an already victimized 10-year-old into that process. Was the timing of the Ohio-referred-to-Indiana case really that cynical?
Thinking to go on Twitter and call me cynical? Remember I’m not the one exploiting an already abused child for political purposes of getting my state to include a rape and incest exception, just writing about it.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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