Gerson Fuentes allegedly confessed to raping the girl at least twice, according to police in Columbus. Police were alerted to a referral from Franklin County Children’s Services made by the girl’s mother on June 22, according to testimony at Fuentes’ July 13 arraignment, as reported by the Columbus Dispatch. On June 30, the girl had an abortion in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ohio’s “fetal heartbeat” law — enacted hours after the Supreme Court ruled to end the constitutional right to abortion care on June 24 — bans abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Columbus Detective Jeffrey Huhn testified that DNA from the clinic in Indianapolis was also tested on samples from Fuentes as well as the child’s siblings. Fuentes was held on $2 million bail and remains in the Franklin County Jail, according to court records. A preliminary hearing was set for July 22. The case was first reported by the Indianapolis Star, which spoke to Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indiana who received a call from a colleague in Ohio seeking help for their 10-year-old patient three days after the Ohio law went into effect. . She was six weeks and three days pregnant, according to Dr. Bernard. The report sparked international outrage, magnifying the far-reaching, myriad effects of eliminating abortion access and care for rape survivors in states where legal abortion is inaccessible. During impassioned remarks at the White House before signing an executive order on abortion access, President Joe Biden also decried the case, saying the girl was “raped, six weeks pregnant, already traumatized, forced to travel to another state.” Right-wing media personalities and outlets were quick to undermine the case, questioning its veracity and accusing the news outlet of participating in a disinformation campaign to preserve abortion rights, while attacking Dr. Bernard’s legitimacy. On Fox News on July 12, Tucker Carlson claimed the case was “not true.” Fox News host Jesse Watters also voiced those doubts in primetime segments on July 11. Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost — who filed a motion to dissolve the injunction blocking the state’s anti-abortion law minutes after the Supreme Court’s decision — claimed on the show that there was “not the slightest indication that this had happen there.” He also told USA Today that the case is “most likely” a “fabrication.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board on July 12 called the case an “improbable story from a biased source that fits the progressive narrative perfectly, but cannot be confirmed.” The editorial cites website PJ Media and author Megan Fox, whose doubts about the case’s existence went viral among right-wing social media users. He celebrated her appearance on Fox News and wrote afterward that the case “should now be relegated to the farce category.” Last week, Dr Bernard told the Independent that the girl at the center of the case was “not alone”. “These are, unfortunately, the real consequences of banning abortion,” he said. “All states have pregnant women who need abortion care, in the most extreme and the most common circumstances, and everyone deserves to have access to comprehensive reproductive health care in a state in which they live.” At least three men have been charged with child molestation in Revenna, Ohio alone in recent weeks. One of these cases involves rapes that took place between January 1 and June 25. In 2020, the year with the most recent data available, 52 abortions were performed in Ohio for children under 15. Victims’ names are withheld from the records, and law enforcement and state officials cannot confirm additional details about such cases without exposing the victim.
