“Investigating statutory rape” appears to be a growing tactic among anti-choice officials: Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline has used a highly dubious claim of concern over statutory rape to demand confidential patient records on women who had abortions in that state (his first subpoena was not limited to underage patients, and he had previously made no effort to investigate underage patients who had given birth rather than have abortions), in an apparent attempt to intimidate those seeking abortions; now North Carolina has arrested a social worker who helped arrange an abortion for a 14-year-old, on grounds that the abortion had destroyed the DNA evidence they wanted to, yes, “investigate statutory rape” and therefore assisting with it was obstruction of justice.

Few facts are available on this case, but it sounds ridiculous on its face. There apparently has been no attempt to arrest the healthcare providers who actually performed the abortion, and the Sheriff’s Department had apparently made no attempt to simply secure a specimen of aborted tissue as evidence after the procedure – which would have been trivially simple. It seems as if the Sheriff was attempting to coerce the patient into undergoing the entire pregnancy involuntarily in order to obtain DNA from the baby afterwards, a position that makes absolutely no scientific sense.

As I say, the facts are not in, but it is hard to imagine that this social worker deliberately set up an abortion in order to prevent a criminal investigation, and it would have been simple for the Sheriff’s Department to conduct their investigation in a way that did not interfere with the patient’s healthcare if they had chosen to do so. It is hard not to see this as another example of official coercion of patients seeking abortion under color of authority.