Consider This from NPR - Abortion Bans Bring Back Painful Memories For One Rape Survivor

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

This summer, just weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the story of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio became a flashpoint in the national abortion debate.The girl had become pregnant as a result of rape and had to travel across state lines to Indiana to get an abortion.For one rape survivor, the case reminded her of what she lived through long ago, before Roe was the law the of the land. She spoke with NPR's Sarah McCammon about her experience.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. Hey there. Before we start today's podcast, we want to note that this episode includes disturbing details about cases of sexual assault involving minors. You may remember the story of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had become pregnant as a result of rape

and had to cross state lines to get an abortion. It starts on May 12th, allegedly. That's what the complaint says. Breaking right now as well, an Ohio man confessing to raping a 10-year-old girl. Detective says she then traveled from Ohio, which has banned most abortions, to neighboring Indiana to end the pregnancy. The story generated all kinds of attention and became a flashpoint in the national debate on abortion just weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The girl's case was cited by President Biden, who called the court's decision, quote, totally wrongheaded. Ten years old. Ten years old. Raped, six weeks pregnant, already traumatized, was forced to

travel to another state. Imagine being that little girl. Just, I'm serious, just imagine being that little girl, 10 years old. Prominent conservatives questioned the story, including Ohio's Attorney General Dave Yost. This young girl, if she exists and if this horrible thing actually happened to her, it breaks my heart to think about it, she did not have to leave Ohio to find treatment. The Republican attorney general in Indiana, the state the girl had traveled to, threatened to investigate the doctor who provided the abortion. That doctor was Indiana OBGYN Caitlin Bernard. Every time I get a call about a patient who needs abortion care, particularly, my heart goes out to the patient, to the physician who is calling for help, and I feel obligated and honestly honored to be able to care for them as

much as I can. In an interview last month with NPR's Sarah McCammon, Bernard said she could not speak specifically about any one patient, but she did speak about the particular risks of pregnancy and birth to young women and girls. Every pregnancy is risky. That's the important thing for people to understand, no matter how healthy, no matter your age. And it's even riskier for young women. It's even riskier for people with medical conditions that make pregnancy dangerous. And there are so many unforeseen situations that can arise during a pregnancy

for which abortion care is the safest and necessary route for that person. As the story of the Ohio girl gained international attention, it had particular resonance for one woman in New Mexico. Well, I knew it was coming. I knew that it was only a matter of time before someone like me hit the news and that a doctor would go public on the effects of these laws. And I was sad and angry. More than half a century ago, before Roe was the law of the land, she was an 11-year-old girl in Texas who had also become pregnant as a result of rape. Consider this.

New abortion bans are bringing back painful memories for a generation of women who grew up before Roe v. Wade. Coming up, we'll hear one woman's story and how she thinks about her experience today. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, August 29th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. New abortion restrictions went into effect last week in Texas, Tennessee, and Idaho. Elizabeth Smith with the Center for Reproductive Rights says when you look at a map of the U.S.,

abortion access looks increasingly like a patchwork. Without federal protection for abortion rights, access is completely determined by where someone lives and their ability to leave their state if there's no access in their state. At least 11 states have total or near-total abortion bans, along with several others, like Georgia, that still have early restrictions starting around six weeks of pregnancy. In Texas and Tennessee, there are no exceptions for rape or incest, and those are just the latest states to implement laws along these lines. The new abortion bans and the story of the 10-year-old Ohio girl have particular resonance for one woman who says what is happening today is a reminder of what she lived through many years

ago. Her name is Elaine, and earlier this summer she spoke with NPR's Sarah McCammon. She came forward to tell the story of what happened to her in 1969 when she was 11, a sixth grader growing up in Amarillo, Texas, the youngest of five in a big Catholic family. I was a tomboy. I liked sports. I rode my bike everywhere. I walked miles and miles and miles barefoot. I was kind of precocious. I was kind of the class clown, actually. Now 65 and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Elaine has asked us to call her only by her middle name because she fears her family could face backlash from her telling the story from her childhood. I shared a room with my 14-year-old sister, and we went to bed at about 10 p.m., and at about 1 in the morning, all of a sudden I saw the door open to our bedroom.

A man snuck in and climbed into her bed. As her sister slept across the room, Elaine says the man raped her, threatening to kill her unless she stayed quiet. Eventually, her sister did wake up and chased the man out of the house. That's when Elaine says all hell broke loose as her parents and the rest of her siblings also woke up to her screaming. My mom called the police and our family doctor and he examined me and I didn't know this until I got the police reports recently but he reported to the police that I had, in fact, been raped. So that's what happened that night. In a police report dated January 15, 1969, 2.58 a.m.,

Elaine and her family recounted those events to Amarillo Police. The report, reviewed by NPR, describes the suspect as a white man between 20 and 30 years old. He was never caught, but the trauma from that night would stay with Elaine in her mind and her body long afterward. One of my sisters told me many years later that after I got back from the hospital, I was taking a bath, of course, and I was singing in the bathtub. And knowing what I know now, I think that's a pretty good indication that I was dissociative, that I had checked out. Elaine was in the early stages of puberty and didn't know what to look out for after the rape. But her mother was paying attention. Several weeks later,

around the time of Elaine's 12th birthday in April. Her mother said they needed to go back to the doctor. And she took me to our family doctor, the same one that examined me in the hospital, and the same doctor who had delivered me 11 years before. Elaine says she didn't understand then what was happening, but now as a retired pharmacist, she does. My mom just said, we've got to, you know, fix some problems down there. And I said, okay, you're fine. And what I remember about that was the pain. And I didn't know what he was doing, but now through adult eyes, looking and with a medical background, I know that he was curataging. My anesthesia was squeezing my mother's hand. It didn't take long, but it was painful.

It was dilation and curatage, a common abortion procedure known as DNC. Elaine says her mother explained what had happened a few years later when she was in her mid-teens. When she reflects on it now, she says she's grateful for how her mother, who died in 2010, handled an impossible situation. And she says she understands that some people have strong moral objections to abortion. My mother was very Catholic. And this is what I would point out to people who have this kind of theoretical vision of how they would react in this kind of a situation. I'm here to tell you, in this kind of a situation, you would throw out your religion in half a second. There's no question. It's easy to say what other people should do when it's theoretical. She couldn't

fully face the trauma from her experience for many years after she became a mother. When I turned 40 and I had an 11-year-old daughter, a lot of my grief was really realizing what it must have been like for my mother to go through something like that. I looked at my own 11-year-old daughter. I can't blame my mother for anything. She did the best she could in a terrible situation. So she did the right thing. Elaine spent about three years in therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder,

and she says she's sharing her story now because she wants to make clear that these situations do happen, even if people would rather not think about them. I think a big part of the reason why we're seeing these draconian laws is because it's been 50 years since Roe was passed and a few generations have grown up. And enough people in today's society don't remember what it was like pre-Roe. In 1969, abortion was illegal in Texas, except to save a pregnant woman's life, as it is again now. While the rape itself was thoroughly documented by Amarillo police at the time, no such records of the abortion appear to exist. Elaine's doctor died decades ago, and abortions were often carried out in secret, says historian Leslie Regan, author of the book When Abortion Was a Crime. She says people who had resources or connections could sometimes find doctors who'd discreetly offer the procedure if the doctor felt it was

warranted. Something like this where the patient knows the doctor, the doctor knows the patient and the family, they could be very sympathetic to the situation, which means they would do it. I mean, my guess would be he probably never wrote anything down about this because why would he? NPR spoke to two family members who say they remember hearing about the rape for years, including one who recalls discussing the abortion more recently. Regan says what's happening now looks very much like a repeat of the past. This is the result. This is going to be one of the results. The other results are some people will go all the way through pregnancies and bear children and will be forced into birth.

Elaine says she sometimes thinks about what would have happened to her without her family doctor if she'd been forced to continue the pregnancy as a sixth grader, still reeling from the trauma of rape. But I probably would have been shipped off somewhere to have the baby. But for me, being four foot ten, a hundred pounds, it would have been a guaranteed C-section. no question. Just the thought of that is just abhorrent. Now retired with three grown children, living with her husband in a house high on a hill overlooking the mountains around Santa Fe, Elaine says she feels compelled to speak up for girls like her who can't. What these children need above all is for it to be over.

They need the trauma to stop. If I were to meet Dr. Bernard's 10 year old patient, I would take her face in my hands and I would look in her eyes and I would say this was not your fault. This was a bad bad man who did this to you and you're gonna have a lot of people who love you who are gonna help you get through this and you're gonna be okay not your fault more than 50 years later Elaine says she got through her unthinkable experience with support from her family and a doctor willing to risk breaking the law to help her. That reporting from Sarah McCammon. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.