Following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, President Biden has criticized states that have imposed strict abortion bans. The President has described a story several times of a 10-year old girl in Ohio who was raped, then denied an abortion because of the state’s restrictions. The child allegedly had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion.
On its face, this story is heartbreaking and deeply sickening to hear. No one wants a 10-year old to have to go through this type of trauma.
There’s one issue, though. No one has been able to prove that this story is even true.
The story was first reported on July 1 by the IndyStar, a news outlet located in Indiana. The article describes a 10-year-old girl who traveled from Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion. The article claimed that child was six weeks and three days pregnant, which is further along than Ohio’s heartbeat abortion ban would allow.
President Biden had this to say about the story after signing an executive order aimed at broadening abortion access:
“This isn’t some imagined horror. It is already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.”
Since these remarks, multiple news organizations have attempted to fact check this story, but none have been successful.
Washington Post fact-checkers, when investigating this, stated the following:
“We contacted child services agencies in some of Ohio’s most populous cities, including Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo. None of the officials we reached were aware of such a case in their areas.“
Even the Ohio Attorney General has stated that he has not seen any evidence that there is a 10-year-old child from the state who was seeking an abortion.
According to Ohio AG Dave Yost:
“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.”
Despite all this, liberal news outlet like the Washington Post have no problem calling the story true anyway just to help the Biden administration:
If it turns out that this report on the 10-year-old girl is not true, then the entire story is just another example of the Biden administration peddling misinformation to advocate for their political agenda. But the fact that news outlets are willing to call this story true before investigating its authenticity is not how reporting should be done. I guess real journalism is dead.
