The new vilification

By now, everyone's heard about the Ohio girl who was raped shortly before her 10th birthday and had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. You've probably also seen the panicked efforts by right wing media and politicians to discredit the story and then when a suspect in the rape was arrested, to pivot to attack the girl's physician and/or the girl's immigration status.

There will be many, many more of these attacks on girls and women, because forced-birth laws cannot be wrong, they can only be wronged. After decades, the forced-birth right finally has to confront the enormity of the nanny state taking control of female bodies and denying females agency over their own lives.

"Before Dr. George Tiller was murdered in 2009, gunned down in his Kansas church, the abortion provider was known for wearing a button that read, ‘Trust Women.’ The slogan conveyed perhaps the most important tenet in reproductive health care: When it comes to abortion, no one is better suited to make a decision than the person carrying the pregnancy.

"I thought of Dr. Tiller and his button this week, as Republican pundits and politicians cast aspersions on the story of a 10-year old girl in Ohio who had been raped and impregnated. It reminded me that to conservatives, there is no story good enough, no woman or girl credible enough."

*snip*

"Childhood sexual abuse is not rare in the United States: One in nine girls will be victimized, and 34% of children who are sexually abused are under the age of 12 years-old. Still, conservatives rushed to call the girl’s story a fabrication—claiming it was manufactured as a ploy to drum up sympathy for abortion rights. (Instead of the more straightforward conclusion that a terrible law will result in terrible things.

"Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested her story was a “hoax,” while Michael Brendan Dougherty at the National Review called it a “a fictive abortion and a fictive rape.” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost even called the girl’s experience into question in multiple interviews, saying he hadn’t heard a “whisper” of the rape anywhere and that the story was likely a “fabrication.”

"It was a glimpse into what we can expect in a post-Roe America: Real life suffering shrugged off as rumor or political fodder, and the picking apart of any experience that might make abortion bans look bad."

*snip*

"So we know what will happen now: Whenever a child is raped, a woman dies, or someone is arrested for a miscarriage, conservatives will deny any of it is happening. They will try to gaslight us into submission. If that doesn’t work, they’ll go on the attack; those who dare to shine a light on the horrors of abortion bans will be targeted. (Right now, for example, conservative media is focusing on the provider who gave the 10 year-old an abortion, posting her picture on Fox News and calling for her license to be revoked.)

"None of this is new, but it is about to get a lot more awful. That’s why Dr. Tiller called on us to ‘trust women’—because someone has to."

https://jessica.substack.com/p/they-will-never-believe-us