CLEVELAND, Ohio — The case of a 10-year-old Columbus girl who was impregnated during a rape and traveled out of state to get an abortion touched off a nationwide firestorm surrounding Ohio’s restrictive heartbeat abortion law.
What has gone unnoticed is that the child is hardly alone.
Court records show a similar case happened in Cleveland last year, before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and a federal judge unlocked Ohio’s ban on abortions after fetal heart activity could be detected.
Two sisters, ages 10 and 13, were impregnated during rapes by the same perpetrator, authorities said. Under Ohio’s old law, the younger girl was able to get an in-state abortion, but her sister, who was too far along to get one here, traveled to Pennsylvania for the procedure, according to court records and a defense attorney involved in the case.
Until June, Ohio law allowed for abortions up to 22 weeks; now, the time table is cut to six weeks.
The cases raise questions about how often young girls are impregnated from sexual assault and the limited options they have since Ohio law provides no exemptions for rape and incest. In the past, Ohio didn’t have an exception either, but the longer grace period allowed more time for women to discover they were pregnant, which experts said is especially crucial for younger victims of rape.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley, who signed a letter with dozens of other prosecutors saying they wouldn’t prosecute people who seek or provide abortions, said the case of the two Cleveland sisters shows why there’s a need for exceptions in Ohio’s abortion law for sexual assault.
“The fact that the Ohio General Assembly would not grant victims of rape and incest an exception to receive reproductive health services is inhumane and out of touch with the views of the majority of Ohioans,” O’Malley said.
The case
Investigators began looking into the cases last August after the girls’ grandmother noticed the 10-year-old girl’s belly growing by the day. She asked the girl’s mother, who said she believed her daughter was eating too much, according to police reports.
The girl’s grandmother brought the girl to University Hospitals, where doctors found the child was about three months pregnant. The girl’s grandmother told police she suspected her daughter’s boyfriend, who she said often got intoxicated around the girl. She said she once walked into a dark room, and the girl was sitting on the man’s lap.
The child’s mother told police that her boyfriend treated the girl well and that her daughter was “very uncomfortable” around her biological father, as he, too, drinks alcohol when he’s around his daughter, according to police reports.
Investigators and county social workers interviewed the girl, who said that her biological father had raped her. He was arrested the next day, and a grand jury indicted him on Aug. 11, 2021. The charge carried a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The 10-year-old girl got an abortion on Aug. 6, according to court records.
Family members later began to suspect her 13-year-old sister was also pregnant. Doctors confirmed she was, and she ultimately got an abortion in Pennsylvania, according to court records and the biological father’s attorney, Russell Tye.
Prosecutors ordered both aborted fetuses tested for DNA. The results came back matching the DNA, not for the girls’ biological father, but for their mother’s boyfriend, according to court records.
A grand jury handed up an indictment against the mother’s boyfriend, charging him with two counts of rape. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, and his trial is scheduled for next month. Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer is not naming the man charged in the case to protect the identity of the two girls.
Prosecutors in February dropped the charges against the girls’ biological father, who had spent about seven weeks in jail on the rape charges and another five months on GPS-monitored house arrest.
Three other cases since 2021
County prosecutors said they’ve subpoenaed DNA for fetal remains in three other cases since 2021 — for girls ages 14, 15 and 17.
Across Ohio, 52 girls under the age of 15 obtained abortions in 2020, including 11 from Cuyahoga County, according to the Ohio Department of Health’s most recent report on abortions. Since 2010, more than 1,000 girls in Ohio under the age of 15 had the procedures. The report doesn’t say if the abortions were performed because of rape.
Both O’Malley and Tye came away from the case shocked and bewildered, especially in light of the new abortion restrictions in Ohio.
“This is extreme to me,” Tye said. “A 10-year-old and a 13-year-old, any victim of sexual assault, having to go through this is something we really need to consider. I mean these are kids. It’s tragic all the way around.”
O’Malley, in a statement, took aim at state Rep. Jean Schmidt, a Loveland Republican, who said that a 13-year-old who became pregnant via rape could view it as an “opportunity.” Schmidt has introduced a bill that would further restrict abortions in the state.
“It is impossible to comprehend how any public official could believe that an ‘opportunity’ is created when a 10-year-old or 13-year-old child is raped and impregnated. In my opinion, that individual is unfit to hold public office,” O’Malley said.
“This case in not an outlier. Children of this age are far too often sexually assaulted, and we should not be revictimizing them again by denying them and their families their right to privacy and their right to make decisions regarding their reproductive health. "
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to Schmidt’s office for comment.
Vagueness of law causes confusion
State lawmakers passed the so-called “Heartbeat Bill” in 2019, but a federal judge in Cincinnati blocked the law from going into effect through an injunction. The injunction was removed after the U.S. Supreme Court decision last month in Roe v. Wade. The recent law bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected – which can be as early as six weeks after conception, before many women know they are pregnant.
Jessie Hill, an expert on abortion law and a professor at Case Western Reserve University, said the law essentially makes it nearly impossible for girls that young to get an abortion in Ohio, and, in most cases, they must go out of state to get one.
She said it’s particularly difficult for young victims of rape to realize they’re pregnant for much longer than six weeks.
“With someone this young, they may not fully understand what’s going on much less realize they’re pregnant,” Hill said. “We know girls under 18 are more likely to discover they’re pregnant farther along because they have abnormal periods at that age anyway, or they’re in denial because they’re children.”
After initially casting doubt on the veracity of the story about the 10-year-old Columbus girl, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer that the girl may have qualified for the state’s exception for medical emergencies. The law says someone can obtain an abortion if there is a substantial likelihood “that a major bodily function will be permanently impaired.”
Doctors must provide a detailed report on why they believe the exception exists, and the findings must be reviewed by another doctor. If a doctor performs an abortion outside the exceptions, they could be subjected to a fifth-degree felony charge.
Hill said Ohio’s law is so vague that doctors may not want to risk criminal charges.
“It creates uncertainty and given that doctors are threatened with a felony, there’s a real incentive in the law not to proceed under that circumstance,” Hill said. “Doctors are considered professionals because they are expected to make these sorts of judgements in the moment based on the individual circumstances of each patient.”