Amelia Robinson Editor of Columbus Dispatch Opinion and Community Engagement. Twitter @ 1AmeliaRobinson
It was easy to overlook the slender girl who lived on the streets of my aunt Kathy for a long time Cleveland In the 1990s.
The girl was only 11 years old and could not weigh more than 80 pounds.
I’m already in my late teens Ohio University.
At first I might have missed her, but as my stomach got thicker and thicker, no one could overlook the girl.
As it was, the whispering became louder and louder, and the man was charged with raping her.
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He was eventually convicted of less charges and the girl abortion.
Her trials were clearly not over.
She got pregnant over and over again as I could only imagine who.
She was a teenager the last time I met her. There were children on each of her narrow hips. One hugged her on her waist.
The Columbus girl case sheds light on the dark problem
When the news came from here that an Ohio girl had taken her to Indiana for an abortion, the memory of the little slender girl came to my mind.
more: Experts say the number of girls pregnant with rape is unknown. But the health risks are clear.
The story of the 11-year-old girl was not about abortion, but like the 10-year-old Columbus girl, she was the victim of a predator and failed in a society that refused to see the reality of child sexual abuse. Did.
Columbus resident Gerson Fentes Arrested He was charged with rape after police confessed that he had raped a 10-year-old child at least twice.
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Her abortion, which attracted international attention, occurred after the Supreme Court ruled that people had no constitutional right to abortion and the so-called Heartbeat Bill in Ohio came into force.
The overly realistic fact that a real Ohio girl was raped until Fuentes was arrested, A politician who knows well but has behaved worse than anyone else with a beating heart.
They know that innocent children are sacrificed in our city, our state, and our country.
It’s not a secret.
Disease Control Center At least one in four girls and one in thirteen boys say they are experiencing child sexual abuse.
Too Frequent — I know that once is too frequent and it happens multiple times — Violator It is a minor to motherhood.
“Do we even understand her little body?”
Tara Seward is well aware that minors can become pregnant after rape. She was much older than 10 when it happened, but still left the scars she still feels.
After graduating from high school early, Seward left Dublin at the age of 16 for Ohio State University.
After a while, I was raped by an acquaintance who was a popular student athlete I met from a friend. Seward said he did not even speak to his close friends after the attack, and that he had never reported to the police, like many victims.
The girl, Rail, was aborted after learning that she was pregnant eight weeks after the assault and discussing options with her mother.
Seward is currently a mother of four and represents two infertile couples. She has experienced multiple pregnancies, including miscarriage, which requires doctrine and covenants to get rid of the fetus, and knows how complex and painful reproduction can be at any age.
When she heard about a 10-year-old Columbus girl, Seward said she thought about her 10-year-old daughter and what would happen if her girl was raped and became pregnant.
“What does that mean?” She asked rhetorically. “Do we even understand her little body?”
Girls can start menstruating at the age of 8 According to the Mayo Clinic.
They are starting early nationwide. The 2020 CDC report shows median age The onset of menstruation dropped from 12.1 in 1995 to 11.9 between 2013 and 2017.
Seward says it is not necessary to put her little girl on oral contraceptives to protect her from the possibility of being forced to give birth to a rapist’s child.
Hundreds of little pregnant girls have had an abortion
Seward said women and girls do not need to reveal her reproductive history or expose the most traumatic experiences of her life to avoid the offspring of the attacker.
But at the moment, that doesn’t change anything.
The state’s new abortion law does not provide tax exemptions for pregnant children or mental illness.
There is no exemption from rape or incest. As a colleague at the USATODAY Network Ohio Bureau reported, Ohio Republicans Those who rule the nation have no plans to change it.
Doctors, lawyers, doctors, lawyers, on the circumstances under which an abortion can be performed if pregnancy indicates “a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of major physical function” or the death of a pregnant person. And there is much debate among lawyers.
more: Ohio Republicans have no plans to exempt rape and incest from abortion bans
2018 study by CDC researchers It was found that nearly 3 million women in the United States experienced rape-related pregnancies throughout their lives.
The data is not classified by age. It is not known how many children of the rape victim were pregnant, but it is known that the girl had an abortion in this condition.
2020, Ohio Health Department 521 minors are said to have had an abortion in Ohio. This includes 52 people under the age of 15.
In that age group, there were 63 procedures in 2019, 54 in 2018, 61 in 2017, and 76 in 2016.
High price for the first time in 10 years In 2010, 182 abortions occurred in girls under the age of 15.
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CDC While 5.2% of women raped by acquaintances became pregnant, nearly 7% were raped by strangers and 26% were raped by their current or former intimate partners.
Members of Seward Positive blue A progressive group formed by Dublin’s mothers, they aim to get women more involved in the community and politics. She said she didn’t even tell her best friend about rape long after the attack. I wondered if Seward should have fought harder.
It took her years to be able to forgive an abortion, even though she made a solid choice and knew it was the right decision.
She graduated from Ohio with a degree in mathematics in 2004 and is doing a good job.
“I’m where I am for everything that happened in my life. I don’t change anything at this point,” Seward said.
Amelia Robinson is the editor of The Columbus Dispatch Opinion and Community Engagement. Twitter @ 1AmeliaRobinson
This article was originally published in Columbus Dispatch: Amelia Robinson: Girl gets pregnant after being raped