Three days after the US Supreme Court, HD, rejected the free abortion right, a pregnant 10-year-old patient from Ohio was referred to a doctor on the other side of the state border.
Ohio was one of the states that had already enacted one that came into force automatically when the HD decision was announced and banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy.
Without exception for rape victims.
Political explosive
When the doctor told his local newspaper about the patient case, questions about the information were immediately raised;
partly because the police in the girl's hometown admitted that they did not know about the case, and partly because the interview of some was interpreted as a strategic move in an already heated debate - The Wall Street Journal called the source "biased".
While President Joe Biden cited the case as an example of the damaging consequences of the restricted abortion law, Ohio's Republican Chief Prosecutor Dave Yost, among others, expressed doubts that the rape took place.
On Tuesday, he said in an interview that "it's probably a fabrication," reports The Columbus Dispatch
The day after the interview, a man in his 20s was arrested.
"We rejoice every time a person who rapes a child disappears from the street," the chief prosecutor wrote in a statement quoted in the newspaper.
Detention hearing
The police officially became aware of the case when the social services provided information to the girl's mother, according to Detective Inspector Jeffrey Huhn, who participated in the detention hearing on Wednesday.
He also said that the man has admitted in interrogation that he had "sexual contact with the girl" twice.
And that the police will compare the man's and the fetus' DNA to investigate whether it was he who made the girl pregnant, reports The Columbus Dispatch.
The inspector also said that what emerged from the criminal investigation confirms the abortion doctor's account of the dates she was in contact with the girl.
"The fact that someone would question a story like this testifies to how deviant legislators and politicians are," the doctor told The New York Times.