An Indiana-based obstetrician-gynecologist, her medical partner and patients have sued the state’s attorney general to block him from using “frivolous” consumer complaints to investigate abortion providers.
Dr Caitlin Bernard faced widespread Republican scrutiny following reports that she provided abortion care to a 10-year-old rape survivor from Ohio who was forced to seek care out of that state under its newly enacted anti-abortion law.
She is leading the lawsuit against Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, who is accused of opening investigations into seven consumer complaints against Dr Bernard after she came under attack for performing a medication abortion days after the US Supreme Court revoked a constitutional right to care.
The lawsuit filed on 3 November claims that “these improper investigations unfairly burden Plaintiffs in numerous ways, threatening not only their livelihood but also the availability of the essential services they provide to their patients.”
Mr Rokita’s “improper conduct dissuades patients who need emergency abortions from seeking care,” according to the lawsuit.
His actions also allegedly threaten patients seeking legal abortion care whose “most personal and private medical records and health care decisions could be exposed as part of a meritless investigation,” according to the complaint.
In late July, Mr Rokita subpoenaed Dr Amy Caldwell for all medical records relating to the 10-year-old patient. Last month, he also subpoenaed a health care clinic seeking medical records for the same patient.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, officials in Ohio – among several states that do not provide any exceptions for abortions from pregnancies resulting from rape or incest – enacted its law prohibiting abortion at the detection of a so-called “heartbeat” at roughly six weeks of pregnancy.
The 10-year-old rape victim in Dr Bernard’s care was reportedly six weeks pregnant.
A suspect in that case was arrested and charged with two counts of felony rape. He has pleaded not guilty.
But right-wing media figures and GOP officials suggested that the crime was a hoax, demanded to see criminal and medical records and fuelled a barrage of attacks against Dr Bernard, who was baselessly accused of failing to notify law enforcement about her patient’s case.
In an interview with Fox News in July, Mr Rokita dismissed Dr Bernard as an “abortion activist acting as a doctor” and claimed, without evidence, that she “covered this up”.
“By statutory obligation, we investigate thousands of potential licensing, privacy, and other violations a year,” press secretary Kelly Stevenson said in a statement to The Indepenent on Thursday. “A majority of the complaints we receive are, in fact, from nonpatients. Any investigations that arise as a result of potential violations are handled in a uniform manner and narrowly focused. We will discuss this particular matter further through the judicial filings we make.”
State lawmakers in Indiana were the first to pass new anti-abortion legislation in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on 24 June in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
That bill, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Eric Holcomb in August, was temporarily blocked by a state judge, who determined that the ban unconstitutionally burdens Indiana residents’ rights “by making that autonomy largely contingent upon first experiencing extreme sexual violence or significant loss of physical health or death.”
In July, Dr Bernard told The Independent that young patients being denied emrgency abortion care represent “real-life consequences” of abortion bans.
“All states have people who are pregnant who need abortion care, in the most extreme circumstances and in the most common circumstances, and everyone deserves to have access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare in a state in which they live,” she told The Independent.
