Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously quipped: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
The facts came back to bite Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, over the rape and pregnancy of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who, two years ago, had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion.
As everyone knows, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022 overruled Roe v. Wade and unleashed the states to go their own way on reproductive rights. As a result, the MAGA legislature in Ohio enacted one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the nation, making it illegal to have an abortion after six weeks when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The little girl was just over the line. She had the procedure in Indiana, where new restrictions had not yet been enacted.
The story received national attention. President Joe Biden decried the situation: “Ten years old, ten years old, raped, six weeks pregnant, already traumatized…forced to travel to another state….Just imagine being that little girl, ten years old.”
The episode was so heart-rending that the right quickly doubted its authenticity. Among them was Turley. Conceding that “the story of the child rape united the nation in revulsion,” Turley questioned its veracity. In a New York Post article published July 12, 2022, under the headline “The 10-year-old rape victim’s abortion leaves a number of glaring questions”, Turley pointed out that the Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost had said on Fox News that there was “not a whisper” of the case, and that “his search for a notorious child rape case in his state had turned up nothing.”
Turley commented: “We have little proof that the story is true despite some significant legal and factual questions.”
He rubbished Biden for making the purported case a “rallying point for the denunciation of the Supreme Court.”
He also trashed the media “from Israel to Bangladesh” for covering the story “exhaustively.”
Other conservative voices piled on. Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, who would become House Judiciary Chair in 2023 when Republicans took control of the chamber, doubted the fellow Buckeye’s claim. “Another lie. Anyone surprised?” he thundered.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, before achieving infamy over shooting her dog and still in the hunt to be Donald Trump’s running mate, tweeted, “It looks like the story was fake to begin with. Literal #FakeNews from the liberal media.”
The Murdoch Troika—the New York Post, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal—all suggested that the story was false. A Fox News host said she found it “deeply offensive” that the media had to “make up” a fake rape victim. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board rebuked Biden for showcasing an “unproven“ story. “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 Journal later retracted its statements.
It was too bad for Turley; by the time the Post got to publication, the newspaper must have known that the “lie” was true. The Post ran the piece anyway and later said in an “Editor’s note” disclaimer in its online edition published July 12, 2022: “After this column was published, news of the rape was confirmed, with Gerson Fuentes, 27, charged with the crime.”
Fuentes, the child’s rapist, was a real person, not a creation of pro-legal abortion forces. The pedophile acknowledged in open court that he had committed the crime, pleaded guilty on July 3, 2023, and was sentenced to life in prison.
Yost backpedaled, saying: “We rejoice anytime a child rapist is taken off the streets.” Rejoice? The Republican had spoken prematurely to help right-to-life ideologues and paid the price in public embarrassment.
Turley claimed that the story of the child rape abortion emanated from a tainted source, an Indianapolis obstetrician/gynecologist, Caitlin Bernard, whom Fox News trashed as a “press darling.”
The girl was only nine years old when Fuentes assaulted her. Shortly after her 10th birthday, she traveled to Indiana for an abortion. Prosecutors said DNA testing of the aborted fetus confirmed Fuentes was the father.
Bernard said an Ohio doctor contacted her to arrange the procedure in Indiana. She raised the issue for maximum impact to alert Indiana residents to the realities of women’s health if the state passed the strict abortion bans under consideration in the statehouse. She said she notified Indiana hospital social workers about the abuse, and Ohio authorities were already investigating the girl’s case.
Turley quibbled, claiming that the abortion could have been legally performed since the Ohio law prohibited abortion only after the “fetal heartbeat has been detected.” But the girl was six weeks and three days pregnant when doctors say a fetus has a detectable heartbeat. She couldn’t get the procedure under Ohio’s post-Dobbs law.
On June 30, 2022, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled the state’s near-total abortion ban could take effect. The legislation—among the strictest in the nation—bans abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and to protect the life and physical health of the mother.
When the facts changed, the right re-focused the debate. Vice presidential nominee JD Vance, then gearing up for his U.S. Senate bid in Ohio, said in a 2021 interview with SpectrumNews1 that he did not believe anti-abortion laws should include exceptions for rape or incest, saying, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” In January 2022, Vance said, he “would like abortion to be illegal nationally” to stop women from crossing state lines to obtain an abortion.
By October 2022, Vance, then the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman, shifted his stance, arguing that the real issue was that Fuentes was an undocumented alien, and Democrats had let him into the country. “That little girl was raped by an illegal immigrant,” Vance said, adding that people “need to be honest about the fact that she would have never been raped in the first place if [Democrats] had done their job on border security.”
By December 2023, Vance, like many Republicans, parroted Trump’s line that a crazy quilt of abortion laws post-Dobbs is just fine—banned here, legal there. His talk of national bans without rape and incest exemptions disappeared. One thing we know about Vance is he is consistently inconsistent. As for the citizens of Ohio, in November 2023, the state’s voters, a conservative lot that had twice voted for Trump by significant margins, put an end to fetal heartbeat standards and loathsome debates over whether a child must carry her rapist’s fetus to term. They overwhelmingly approved a referendum enshrining abortion rights in the state’s constitution.
