Anti-abortion activist claims 10-year-old’s abortion was not an abortion in bizarre House committee testimony

A Human Rights Campaign legal expert called the remarks “very significant disinformation”

The president of an anti-abortion legal advocacy group told a House committee this week that abortion care for a 10-year-old girl would not be considered an abortion.

During an exchange with Democratic US Rep Eric Swalwell about restrictions on abortion care, Americans United for Life president Catherine Glenn Foster told the House Judiciary Committee on 14 July that treating a 10-year-old girl for an abortion after she was raped would “impact her life and so therefore it would fall under any exception, it would not be an abortion.”

“Wait,” said Congressman Swalwell. “It would not be an abortion if a 10-year-old, with her parents, made a decision not to have a baby as the result of a rape?”

“If a 10 year old became pregnant as a result of rape, and it was threatening her life, then that’s not an abortion, so it would not fall under any abortion restriction in our nation,” said Ms Foster

The question followed the arrest of a 27-year-old suspect in Ohio charged with raping a 10-year-old girl, who was referred for abortion care in Indiana after Ohio officials enacted a state law that outlaws abortions at roughly six weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest.

Ohio’s law went into effect mere hours after the US Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion care last month. The court’s ruling now allows states to enact restrictive anti-abortion laws previously considered unconstitutional under the half-century precedent established in Roe v Wade.

Acccording to police testimony, police were alerted to the case via a referral from Franklin County Children Services made by the girl’s mother on 22 June. Two days later, the state’s anti-abortion law went into effect, and she reportedly received care in Indiana on 30 June.

Congressional committees are holding a series of hearings on the state of abortion access and the far-reaching impacts of the Supreme Court’s decision on 24 June in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Congressman Swalwell called on committee witness panelist Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, to respond to Ms Foster’s remarks.

“I heard some very significant disinformation,” she said, before adding: “An abortion is a procedure. It’s a medical procedure that individuals undergo for a wide range of circumstances, including because if they have been sexually assaulted, or raped in the case of the 10 year old.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not there is a statutory exemption, it is still a medical procedure that is understood to be an abortion.”

Democratic US Rep Madeleine Dean also condemned Republican committee members’ anti-abortion rhetoric as well as “the witness, our expert here, fabricating that if a girl had a procedure to save her life, that it’s no longer an abortion.”

“Of course it is, it’s a medical procedure,” she said. “Republicans think women are too stupid to make decisions for ourselves.”

Ohio’s Attorney General Dave Yost claimed that the rape victim “did not have to leave Ohio to find treatment”; that is not the case according to state’s law and analysis from the nonpartisan government agency Ohio Legislative Services Commission.

Ohio is among 10 states – including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas – that do not provide any exceptions for abortions from pregnancies resulting from rape or incest under their state laws governing abortion care. Some of those measures are currently blocked by legal challenges.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, nearly all abortions at any point in a pregnancy are outlawed in at least nine states – Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin – and other states are implementing other restrictions to accessing legal care.