The news of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who traveled to Indiana to obtain an abortion caught national attention last week when President Joe Biden mentioned it in a White House speech. Those reports were soon rebuffed by abortion opponents who suggested the story had been fabricated.
Before The Columbus Dispatch reported Wednesday that 27-year-old Gerson Fuentes had been charged with and confessed to raping the girl, Ohio’s attorney general, state elected officials and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, among others, all cast doubt on whether the account of the girl’s pregnancy and subsequent travel across state lines for an abortion was true.
Republicans were quick to pounce on the case as news of it spread nationally, spouting claims that the story was part of a pro-liberal abortion rights agenda.
Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said on Monday in an appearance on Fox News that he had heard “not a whisper” about the case from law enforcement or arrests made in connection with the case. He doubled down on Tuesday, suggesting to USA Today’s Ohio bureau that the story was a “fabrication.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in a tweet last week that “it looks like the story was fake to begin with. Literal #FakeNews from the liberal media.”
In a follow-up editorial published Thursday, the Journal’s editorial board conceded that the reports it had questioned were indeed accurate. The Journal lamented that the initial reports had not been more thoroughly confirmed by law enforcement or local press but wrote that “we appreciate our obligation to correct the record on the case, which is a terrible one.”
Now that the story has been verified and the original claims have been debunked, Republicans have taken to politicizing a different dimension of the case: immigration.