Republican says 'every life is precious' after being confronted about 10-year-old pregnant rape victim

Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota was grilled on whether she thought child rape victims should be forced to go through with their pregnancy during an interview on CNN's “State of the Union."

Talking to Dana Bash, Noem was asked about her thoughts on the reports that a 10-year-old pregnant rape victim was forced, along with her family, to cross state lines in order to access abortion services in Indiana because of Ohio's strict abortion laws.

Asked if South Dakota will, "going forward, force a 10-year-old in that very same situation to have a baby," Noem called the story "tragic."

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

"As much as we can talk about what we can do for that little girl, I think we also need to be addressing those sick individuals that do this to our children," she said.

In response Bash replied: "But our bodies are our bodies, and women are the ones who get pregnant. And, in this case, it wasn’t a woman. It was a girl."

Noem added she "couldn't even imagine" herself or her family going through something like this, but then in the same breath said: "Every single life is precious, and noted that abortions in South Dakota are illegal with the exception to save the life of the mother."

"And you would be okay with that? A 10-year-old girl having to have a baby?" Bash pressed further.

"What I would say is, I don’t believe a tragic situation should be perpetuated by another tragedy. And so there’s more that we have got to do to make sure that we really are living a life that says every life is precious," Noem said.

Bash then told Noem she kept thinking about how a 10-year-old girl probably can't carry a baby without being hurt both emotionally and physically and asked the governor if she would consider that to be "the life of a mother at risk."

"I think that's something I think that’s something that — yes, that situation, the doctor, the family, the individuals closest to that will make the decisions there for that family," Noem replied.

She added: “every state will have different laws on the books," and said this is "the way our Constitution intended.”

The US Supreme Court recently and controversially overturned Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision from 1973 which gave the constitutional right to abortion.

The decision means individual states can now ban the medical procedure, with 26 states predicted to move to ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

One of those states is South Dakota whose "trigger law" automatically banned abortion in light of the Supreme Court ruling.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.