In a matter of days, a case described in a news story in Indiana turned into a national flashpoint in the culture wars.
An Indy Star story included the case of a pregnant 10-year-old who traveled out of state for an abortion after she was sexually assaulted. The support for the report was the doctor who performed the procedure, quoted by name. The story quickly caught on in national media as an example of the need for accessible abortion care — and was just as quickly seized on by conservative media and Republican politicians who said the doctor’s words were not enough proof, questioning whether the story was even true, and that it was another example of agenda-driven coverage from mainstream news outlets.
The outrage churned for a week. Then, on Wednesday, an Ohio man was arrested and charged with the rape of a minor. But rather than putting the issue to rest, the revelation gave a further boost to what has become one of the first major news stories of the post-Roe era. It’s not expected to be the last.
“What makes this type of thing so engaging, I think, for conservative news consumers is that it puts all the focus on questioning the motives of liberal media and political figures,” Anthony Nadler, an associate professor of media and communication studies at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, wrote in an email.
This obscures any focus on the actual victim’s experience or what her experience tells us about political choices about abortion rights.
-Anthony Nadler , associate professor of media and communication studies at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania
It’s a dynamic that also points to how the ongoing culture war around abortion can quickly become about anything other than the people at the center of these stories. As Laura Hazard Owen put it in an article for Harvard University’s NiemanLab: Unimaginable abortion stories will become more common. Is American journalism ready?”
Such a frenzy can take away from the crux of the story.
“This obscures any focus on the actual victim’s experience or what her experience tells us about political choices about abortion rights,” Nadler noted.
The news cycle began on July 1, when the Indy Star published an article highlighting how patients from neighboring states seeking abortions in Indiana, where abortion remains legal following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The article mentioned the pregnant child as an example of patients traveling from states like Ohio, where abortion is banned after the…
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