Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said Monday on Fox News that his office has no evidence that a 10-year-old girl was raped and became pregnant in the state, despite media outlets and President Joe Biden spreading the story as fact in recent days.
Yost appeared on Fox News Primetime with host Jesse Watters and explained that the rape of a 10-year-old girl would require mandatory reporting to law enforcement by Ohio law, and that his office has worked with law enforcement across the state to search for a possible case matching President Biden’s description. Nothing has come up so far, he said.
“We have a decentralized law enforcement system in Ohio, but we have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs — not a whisper anywhere,” Yost said. “Something maybe even more telling Jesse, is my office runs the state crime lab. In a case like this, you’re going to have a rape kit. You’re going to have biological evidence, and you would be looking for DNA analysis, which we do most of the DNA analysis in Ohio.”
“There is no case request for analysis that looks anything like this,” he added.
The story of a 10-year-old being raped and becoming pregnant originated in the Indianapolis Star, with a single source named Dr. Caitlin Bernard. Bernard, an Indianapolis-based doctor, claimed that the young girl had to travel across state lines from Ohio to Indiana to seek an abortion because Ohio had implemented a six-week abortion ban after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month.
National media outlets quickly reprinted the story, often without any additional scrutiny, despite there being no corroboration beyond the claims of Bernard. President Biden then repeated the story last week when stumping for abortion access during a speech. (RELATED: Biden Signs Executive Order Aimed At Protecting Access To Abortion, Contraception)
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Bernard in an attempt to gather more facts about the story, but Bernard refused to provide any. Thus far, the pro-abortion doctor has not shared specifics including the identity of the young girl’s doctor, if charges were being pressed in the case, if it had been reported to law enforcement or where the alleged events occurred.
“The doctor in Indiana isn’t in our jurisdiction, obviously. We don’t know who the originating doctor in Ohio was, if they even exist,” Yost continued Monday. “But the bottom line is, it is a crime if you’re a mandated reporter to fail to report. It’s also the fact that in Ohio, the rape of a 10-year-old means life in prison. I know our prosecutors and cops in this state. There’s not one of them that wouldn’t be turning over every rock in their jurisdiction if they had the slightest hint that this occurred there.”