Ohio minors sought abortions out of state after being sexually assaulted, affidavits say

The rape of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had reportedly traveled to Indiana for an abortion is not the only case of a minor who had to cross state lines in the wake of a state law banning virtually all forms of the procedure, health providers say.

In affidavits filed this month included as part of a lawsuit challenging the Ohio law — which went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion — two separate providers said they each had a case in which a minor was sexually assaulted and had to travel out of state to terminate their pregnancies.

Aeran Trick, the operations manager of the Women’s Med Center of Dayton, said that they were contacted in July about a 16-year-old in southwest Ohio who had been sexually assaulted, allegedly by a family member.

The girl could not legally access an abortion in Ohio “due to the presence of fetal heart tones,” Trick said, so she traveled to Indianapolis, where the center operates a sister clinic. Law enforcement in Ohio was aware of the case, Trick added, and they had to go to Indianapolis to retrieve tissue to be tested as part of a sexual assault investigation.

“I am concerned that Ohio’s ban and the need to travel increasingly far distances to obtain abortion care not only causes unimaginable harm to these young victims, but could also hamper law enforcement’s ability to investigate and prosecute these cases in the future,” Trick said in the affidavit.