Linda Dunn
Many questions and concerns have arisen since a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim was sent to Indiana for the abortion that was denied her in her home state.
I hope we can engage in rational dialogues with one another about how to best balance the needs of child rape victims with the desire to preserve what many of us believe to be life that is not forming, but already in full existence and just needing to grow inside another human body until such time as that life is capable of existing separately.
It’s a hard discussion to have with those of us who are strong proponents of “bodily anatomy” and vigorously object to the “nanny state” imposing restraints based upon religious beliefs that we do not share. This is especially true for my Jewish friends, whose firmly held religious belief is that life begins at first breath.
These strongly held but different “facts” we live by make it difficult for meaningful discussions to take place, and yet I am confident we could do so if we could just persuade certain public figures to cease their “profit by division” tactics that drive a wedge between those of us who hold opposing views while boosting their ratings and/or political careers.
I am particularly annoyed at the moment with Indiana’s Attorney General, who stated a determination to investigate the Indiana doctor who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim even after it was verified that the doctor had complied with all legal requirements.
Indiana’s backlog of untested rape kits was higher in 2021 than it was in 2017. Why doesn’t he investigate that?
Kudos to our Indiana State Senator Mike Crider for S.B. 264, which took the first step toward creating a statewide sexual assault kit tracking system back in 2018. But we’ve still got a backlog larger than it was in 2017 at the same time we have a hefty budget surplus. Why haven’t we made more progress in this area?
Reducing that backlog of about 5,000 kits should be a priority for the state’s attorney general, not harassing a medical professional who presumably knew more about the 10-year-old rape victim’s medical needs than any of us sitting in the 21st century version of the peanut gallery have any right to know.
Thankfully, we have laws to protect the privacy of children and hopefully the overwhelming majority of us understand why protecting them is more important than satisfying our morbid desire for more information about this 10-year-old rape survivor.
This is not Shirley Temple tap dancing with Mr. Bojangles in “Little Miss Broadway” for our entertainment. This is a 10-year-old girl with an unknown history who has endured something that none of us would ever wish upon anyone else, and especially not a child of such a vulnerable age. She deserves to be protected from us and those public figures who seek to exploit her story for personal gain should find something else to talk about to boost their ratings.
As for the alleged rapist who may or may not have confessed (depending upon your news source), Gerson Fuentes, is a 27-year-old adult and thus fair game for those reporters and commentators as well as us spectators who apparently want to convict him in the court of public opinion before we try him in a court of law.
Our attorney general has grabbed the spotlight for that one as well, blaming Joe Biden’s immigration policies for Gerson Fuentes’ presence in the US while ignoring the fact that Fuentes has been living relatively freely in our country during three Presidential administrations – both Democratic and Republican.
There’s more than enough blame to go around, so I suggest he address the issues he can actually have a positive impact upon in Indiana – like that rape kit backlog – and join “Dancing With the Stars” if he craves being in the spotlight that badly.
As for our state legislators, who have vowed to gift us restrictive abortion laws, I beg them to remember that far too often the things that proponents promise can never happen in real life far too often do happen.
A lifelong resident of Hancock County, Linda Dunn is an author and retired Department of Defense employee. Send comments to [email protected].
