Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost told Fox News Monday night there is no evidence of a 10-year-old girl in his state who was raped, became pregnant, and traveled to Indiana for an abortion, as Joe Biden claimed during his remarks justifying his executive order that attempts to undermine the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“Not a whisper,” Yost told Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Primetime. “We have a decentralized law enforcement system in Ohio, but we have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs. Not a whisper anywhere.”
BREAKING: Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost says there is "not a whisper" that a 10-year-old child was raped and impregnated, there has been no request for crime lab results, and that Ohio's heartbeat law would have allowed such a young girl to get an abortion in the state. pic.twitter.com/oIhJzNiq52
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 11, 2022
“Something that may be even more telling, Jesse,” the attorney general continued, “is my office runs the state crime lab. Any case like this, you’re going to have a rape kit, you’re going to have biological evidence, and you would be looking for DNA analysis which – we do most of the DNA analysis in Ohio. There is no case request for analysis that looks anything like this.”
“It’s also a crime to hide child rape,” Watters observed. “Isn’t it against the law if you have a 10-year-old girl come in, obviously she’s not of the age of consent? They have to report that to law enforcement and, if they don’t, that abortion doctor, or any doctor, should be prosecuted in your state, correct?”
“That’s correct,” Yost responded. “Now, the doctor in Indiana isn’t in our jurisdiction, obviously,” the attorney general noted, referencing Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the sole source of the Indianapolis Star story where the claim about a raped and pregnant 10-year-old girl originated.
“We don’t know who the originating doctor in Ohio was – if they even exist,” Yost asserted. “But, the bottom line is it is a crime if you’re a mandated reporter to fail to report.”
“It’s also the fact that, in Ohio, the rape of a 10-year-old means life in prison,” the attorney general continued. “I know our prosecutors and cops in this state. “There’s not one of them that wouldn’t be turning over every rock in their jurisdiction if they had the slightest hint that this occurred there.”
Yost also corrected one of the primary pieces of the alleged claim – that the 10-year-old girl had to leave Ohio to obtain an abortion because of the state’s Heartbeat law.
“Ohio’s Heartbeat law has a medical emergency exception, broader than just the life of the mother,” the attorney general asserted. “This young girl, if she exists and if this horrible thing actually happened to her – it breaks my heart to think about it – she did not have to leave Ohio to find treatment.”
Watters said during his introduction to the story that Primetime contacted not only Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s (R) office for information about the case, but also all the abortion clinics in Ohio to determine if any had filed a police report about a 10-year-old raped and pregnant girl. No evidence of the case, however, was found anywhere.
“You would think the story of a sexual abuser, roaming free, assaulting 10-year-olds, would raise quite a few concerns in small-town Ohio,” Watters asserted, adding:
But no one seems to be doing anything about it. No one even knows anything about it. Local media outlets are not even alerting the public there’s a monster on the loose. And, from what we can find, no local newspaper or TV station picked up the story. The only source for this entire story is Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the abortion doctor in Indiana. Bernard ran quickly to the cameras last week.
Watters showed a clip of Bernard, an activist abortionist with ties to Planned Parenthood Indiana Georgetown and an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Indiana University School of Medicine.
Appearing last week on MSNBC, Bernard targeted legislation in pro-life states following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade and pushed her 10-year old rape victim story.
Referring to abortion as “care,” Bernard, who earns her living from providing abortions, explained how “incredibly difficult” it is to provide “this care” with many states restricting or banning abortion.
“We need to provide this care,” she insisted.
Meanwhile, MSNBC‘s clip provided indicates host Lawrence O’Donnell did not ask one question of Bernard regarding whether she reported the case of the 10-year-old to law enforcement or child protective services.
Watters noted Indiana also requires mandated reporters to report child rape to law enforcement, but Primetime found no evidence Bernard made such a report.
“In fact, Bernard has a history of not reporting abuse cases to the police,” Watters reported.
In 2018, Indiana Right to Life performed an audit of public record pregnancy reports and found nine abortionists, among them Bernard, allegedly neglected to report minor-age abortions to the state’s health department and social services, as the law requires:
Forty-eight consumer complaints have been filed against nine Indiana abortion doctors who have allegedly failed to follow the legal reporting requirements to protect young children from sex abuse. The doctors are: Jeffrey Glazer, Caitlin Bernard, Cassandra Cashman, Carol Dellinger, Mandy Gittler, Kathleen Glover, Martin Haskell, Resad Pasic and Sarah Turner. They are employed at all licensed Indiana abortion facilities: Women’s Med Center in Indianapolis, Clinic for Women in Indianapolis, and Planned Parenthood in Indianapolis, Lafayette, Bloomington and Merrillville.
Planned Parenthood is a rapist’s best friend.https://t.co/LLzPo16Zw2
— Live Action (@LiveAction) July 10, 2022
Alleged coverups of statutory rape at abortion facilities have been the subject of other investigations.
In 2008, pro-life organization Live Action conducted an undercover investigation to explore how eight Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, and one independent facility, would respond to a pro-life activist posing as a young girl disclosing she was the victim of statutory rape.
“Eight Planned Parenthood facilities were willing to cover up sexual abuse in six different states,” Live Action’s investigation report headline read.
“Planned Parenthood is a rapist’s best friend,” posted Live Action Sunday, referencing another 2018 report featuring former abortion workers who said they “lied about ages” of girls seeking abortions in order to avoid having to report sexual abuse.
In a webcast sponsored by Abby Johnson’s organization And Then There Were None, a ministry that helps abortion workers leave the industry, former abortion worker Shelley Guillory explained why abortion clinics try to avoid reporting statutory rape:
That way we didn’t have to get any law enforcement involved because – you have to stop and think. When we have a minor that’s come in and there’s suspected child abuse or sexual abuse we have to get law enforcement involved. Law enforcement has to be there from the beginning of the procedure to the end. There are samples and specimens that have to be collected so they can do DNA analysis. Well this makes a lot of our other patients uncomfortable. So to get around that, we started lying about ages. So, we had no conflicts as far as that was concerned.
The Star News Network reached out to Bernard for further information about the “child abuse doctor” who, according to the Indianapolis Star, referred the 10-year-old to Bernard, and whether Bernard or her Ohio colleague had reported the alleged rape of a child to law enforcement or child protective services. Bernard did not respond to the request.
Noting that other fact-checkers as well have not been able to obtain any further information from the Indianapolis Star after its decision to publish the story based upon one source, an activist abortionist, Watters concluded, “So, the Indianapolis Star released one of the most viral stories of the summer, a story that’s been seized on by the president of the United States, and, now, they’re running and hiding.”
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Dave Yost” by Dave Yost.
