An Ohio man was sentenced to life in prison for the rape of a 9-year-old girl.
28 year old Gerson Fuentes is accused of impregnating the girl, who at 10, had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion.
The case drew national attention after the doctor who provided the procedure was given a letter reprimanding the obstetrician-gynecologist, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, for violating a patient privacy law because she discussed the procedure with a journalist.
Fuentes pleaded guilty in court to the charges against him. He will be able to file for parole after 25 years in prison, and would have to register as a sex offender.
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He had previously pleaded not guilty in a Columbus, Ohio court to two felony counts of rape. Police said he confessed to raping the girl on two separate occasions after his arrest on in July last year.
Ohio's "heartbeat" abortion ban law says for an abortion to be conducted in the state the patient has to have a life-threatening emergency with a “serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” Ohio's legislation also bans abortions at the first detectable “fetal heartbeat.”
The then-10-year-old's pregnancy would not have qualified as an emergency, according to Kellie Copeland, a director at the abortion rights group Pro-Choice Ohio. That is why she was taken across state lines to an abortion clinic in Indianapolis, Indiana to see Dr. Bernard.
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