Opinion: Only more horror stories coming

Now that a 27-year-old man’s confession has substantiated a doctor’s story that a 10-year-old girl was raped, got pregnant and had to go out of state to get an abortion, you’d have a heart of stone not to feel for the girl. And if you insist that she should carry her pregnancy full term, you’re more than heartless, you’re being cruel.

I say this because it sickens me when children are victimized as this young girl has been, first by a man who reportedly raped her at least twice, then by an Ohio law that prohibits abortions after six weeks. Consequently, the girl was taken to Indiana — which has no such restriction, yet — to get the abortion.

Raise your hand if you think the 10-year-old girl is a murderer. Or that the parent(s) or guardian who let her abort are murderers. Or the doctor who performed the abortion and may have saved the life of the 10-year-old in the process.

I must admit, I didn’t believe this young girl’s story at first; I suspected it was an internet fabrication. But now it rings true — so true, in fact, that even the conservative Wall Street Journal has corrected its previous skepticism in deference to the facts now exposed.

Initially, it was a one-source story. Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indianapolis, first said in an interview with the Indianapolis Star that she’d performed the abortion on the young girl. But that by itself wasn’t enough to verify it as fact.

Then came documentation filed with the Indiana Department of Health and the Department of Child Services verifying that the abortion had taken place. And then, on top of that, came a Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch report about Gerson Fuentes’ confession that he’d raped the girl at least twice. Now, it’s confirmed as a true story.

Of course, some will continue to deny it anyway, or at least they’ll downplay it, as they will do with future stories about other girls who find themselves pregnant by rape. The Dispatch, in a deeper dive into the last couple of months of Columbus police reports, found 50 more rape and sex abuse reports involving girls 15 years or younger.

Expect more horror stories of girls who are forced to have their rapist’s babies. It will be sickening.

Of course, it’ll be the “liberal” media that will exploit such tragedies, anti-abortion absolutists will say as if that makes it all untrue. Meanwhile, more children will be victimized by draconian anti-abortion laws, tempered only by the fact that some states (like New Mexico) will accept and help little girls who have been impregnated by a monster in their lives.

It’s sickening to think that extreme opinions about abortion — yes, to believe in no exceptions is an extreme view, held by a significant minority of Americans — will now trump reasonable health and safety considerations for a girl and her fetus.

I don’t understand how good conservative people of conscience don’t even seem to wince over the horrors created by their absolutist leaders. It’s like caging kids down at the border. It doesn’t hurt the “close-the-border” crowd, or any of their loved ones, so they’re able to turn a blind eye to the suffering at the border. And yet, amazingly, these same people want to call us a “Christian nation.” That’s certainly not the kind of Christianity I grew up with.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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