Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, there’s been moderate exhalation on the right and righteous anger on the left. (Democratic leaders, meanwhile, don’t seem to have any ideas on how to fight it.) Already we’re starting to see the grim consequences. On Saturday, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl from Ohio who had been raped by her uncle had to travel to Indiana after being denied an abortion. Now anti-abortion politicians are being asked point-blank about what they think about this horrific situation, and their answers are, to put it mildly, not great.
Dana Bash: Will the state of South Dakota going forward force a 10-year-old in that very same situation to have a baby?
Kristi Noem: In South Dakota, the law today is that abortions are illegal except to save the life of the mother.
[that’s a yes] pic.twitter.com/QSZHGoy5TM
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 3, 2022
Kristi Noem, the very MAGA governor of South Dakota, went on CNN’s State of the Union, where host Dana Bash brought up the story of the 10-year-old. “Because this was a trigger law that was passed before you became governor,” Bash asked Noem, “I want you to be clear, will the state of South Dakota going forward force a 10-year-old in that very same situation to have a baby?”
Noem not only avoided the answer but did her best to change the subject. “What’s incredible is that nobody’s talking about the pervert, horrible and deranged individual that raped a 10 year old,” Noem replied. “What are we doing about that?”
Bash tried to get her back on track, asking if she was “okay with a 10-year-old girl having to have a baby.” But Noem was vague, saying, “No, I’m never okay with that. That story will keep me up at night. It breaks my heart.”
Bash tried again, asking if she would “change the law to have an exception for a situation like that?”
At this point Noem finally offered a kind of answer, buried in a torrent of words. “I can’t even imagine. What I would say is I don’t believe a tragic situation should be perpetuated by another tragedy,” Noem finally said. “And so there’s more that we’ve got to do to make sure that we really are living a life that says every life is precious, especially innocent lives that have been shattered like that 10-year-old girl.”
In other words, yep, Noem would force a 10-year-old who was raped to give birth, despite what they might do to her own body. As George Carlin once said about the anti-abortion crowd, “if you’re pre-born, you’re fine, if you’re preschool, you’re f*cked.”