What if the Worst Case Was Real?

 

On Monday evening, Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested on his show that the case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was forced to travel to Indiana to get an abortion after she was raped was fabricated.

On Wednesday, that girl’s alleged rapist was arrested. https://t.co/ptdToY5L4Z

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 13, 2022

Jesse Watters is proof that FOX News basically vets their on-screen talent for major personality disorders and if they haven't any, dismisses them. He is following in the footsteps of mentor Bill O'Reilly, whose litany of "George Tiller, baby killer" led to the murder of a church-going man who assisted pregnant people in terminating pregnancies that for many reasons they could not complete. And while fact-checkers don't hold O'Reilly responsible, on my word, I will. He gave a name. He tried to rile up people against him on purpose. He put a target on a person, and even if the dots can't be directly connected, it's not hard to see what he was doing.

Watters and the AG of Indiana are now wanting to go after the doctor. Let me just say this: do you all not get that being pregnant is time sensitive, while a rape conviction takes all the time in the damn world?  That a 10 year old presenting with pregnancy is obviously raped whether we have a suspect or not, and a 10-year old is not the best advocate for herself? That a ten year old child, of all people, cannot wait until we have an accused and convicted rapist, and that is why no pregnant person should have to submit themselves to the entirety of the criminal justice system before they can get their immediate physical condition administered to? 

Don't think it doesn't bother me that people who were so quick to call other people (in the LGBT community) "groomers" were so quick to deny that a particular instance of pedophilia existed. 

Why would we have to prove rape, have an accused, etc., before taking care of a person who claims to be violated? Especially when the rate of accusation to conviction is so low, and the rate of consequences for victims reporting is so high. Abortion "exceptions" are looking for "perfect victims". They are looking for someone very nearly like this ten-year-old, except they will try to find reason why she still isn't an ideal victim, and why and why and why. 

Let me sort this out for you--in the real world, not on paper or in the abstract, people are abused, and especially female-coded people. They can become pregnant, and their rapist will go unpunished in all too many cases. That has no bearing on whether they ever had the right to bodily autonomy. It shouldn't be conditional on the whole because rape fetuses and intentional fetuses are alike in their not being persons because they haven't got memories, thoughts, self-awareness, etc. 

And yet right wingers stand ready to punish doctors for trying to take care of the victims they have in front of them now, regardless of the slow wheel of the justice system. I am frustrated that the presentation of an accused person suddenly legitimizes this child's ordeal when the reality that 10 year olds are capable of pregnancy as an anatomical fact when they are not legally capable of consent never was apparently treated as real in the abstract. As if the anti-abortion happy-asses always thought their abortion-seekers were always sluts trying to slough off their carnal mistakes. 

And so what if they were? But that's a whole other blog post for another time.