And back in April 2022, here is the female GOP rep who introduced this bill. Pls remember, this case arose because the child had been placed with Child Protective Services:
Ohio lawmaker calls pregnancies from rape an ‘opportunity’ for victims
Washington Post 29April2022
(excerpts, subscriber-only access)
An Ohio lawmaker proposing a near-total abortion ban was given a hypothetical: [If] A 13-year-old girl is raped and becomes pregnant as a result. Would the Republican’s bill force that teenager to have her rapist’s baby?
Yes — and the resulting child would be an “opportunity,” stated Rep. Jean Schmidt said this week. “It is a shame that it happens, but there’s an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she’s going to do to help that life be a productive human being,” she said.
Schmidt made the comment while testifying Wednesday before a committee about her legislation, House Bill 598, which would ban abortions, except those needed to end life-threatening pregnancies. Schmidt’s bill is part of a wave of antiabortion legislation cropping up in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country as conservatives anticipate a Supreme Court decision that would overturn or weaken Roe v. Wade — an increasingly likely prospect as the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, considers a case about Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, The Washington Post reported.
... Her testimony before Ohio’s House Government Oversight Committee remained collegial through most of Wednesday’s hearing, although lawmakers’ passions flared while discussing her bill’s lack of a rape exception. Her colleague Rep. Richard Brown (D) started the discussion by proposing the hypothetical example of a 13-year-old girl impregnated by a rapist and giving his interpretation of Schmidt’s legislation: It would require that teenager to carry a “felon’s fetus” to term, no matter the emotional or psychological trauma that would cause her.
“Is that right?” Brown asked.
“Rape is a difficult issue, and it emotionally scars the individual … for the rest of their life, just as child abuse does,” Schmidt replied. “But if a baby is created, it is a human life, and, whether that mother ends that pregnancy or not, the scars will not go away — period.”
Schmidt’s answer did not satisfy Brown. “I think this girl has rights, every bit as much as this zygote has rights under your bill. This girl has rights, and I don’t believe we can lose sight of the rights of the person who was raped.”
