They Will Never Believe Us
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.
They will never believe us.
What started as a local news story about people traveling to other states for abortion care—an Indiana doctor shared an anecdote about the girl to an IndyStar reporter—quickly went viral, becoming a stark example of the cruelty of America’s abortion bans. Joe Biden even mentioned the young girl when giving comments about abortion rights.
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.
More troubling than the conservative bombardment, though, was the way the mainstream media joined in to cast doubt on the story: The Wall Street Journal declared it “too good to confirm,” while The Washington Post’s fact-checking columnist argued it would “have more solid grounding” if the rape was confirmed by law-enforcement or if someone was charged. (Only 5% of rapes result in an arrest.)
Other publicans demanded that Biden ‘verify’ the girl’s story.
After an arrest was made on Wednesday, those who scrutinized the story doubled down on their previous skepticism, arguing there was no way to have known if the account was true without confirmation from state officials or police. The fact that the doctor who performed the girl’s abortion was on the record seemed to carry no weight, nor did widely-available statistics showing that most rapes go unreported, or the idea that an abused minor might have privacy protections in place.
It’s clear that traditional journalism—and male reporters, in particular—are not ready for the complicated stories that will come out of states where abortion is illegal. Consider The Washington Post’s fact-checking columnist Glenn Kessler, who defended his piece by calling the abortion provider an “activist on one side of the debate.” Why would a police officer’s account, or a state official’s, be more reliable than a doctor’s? Are we to believe that in a state where abortion is criminalized, law enforcement and government officials are objective?
The American system is not set up to believe women or girls—in fact, it’s designed to do just the opposite. Our experiences, especially those having to do with our bodies or sexual assault, are disbelieved, maligned, or relentlessly picked apart for ‘biases’. In a misogynist country, all women are suspect.
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.
> Why would a police officer’s account, or a state official’s, be more reliable than a doctor’s?
Especially given that cops are well-known to lie (Uvalde being one such example).
Thank you. A very clear laying out of the details.
In a world where the odds are increasingly stacked against women, the thought floated through my mind, would I rather be a man? No. So many men and the women who enable them, seem to have lost any ethical compass. It must be their hormones constantly leading them astray and preventing them from thinking logically. I am increasingly of the opinion that men should not be allowed to engage in important decision-making. I think it might even be time to consider if men should be allowed to vote, It just doesn’t seem that they are suited to all that responsibility. :)