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Supporters of an Indianapolis doctor voiced frustration Friday with the Indiana medical board’s decision that she violated patient privacy laws when she talked with a newspaper reporter about providing an abortion to a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim.
The board’s vote late Thursday to issue a letter of reprimand against Dr. Caitlin Bernard won’t limit her ability to practice medicine in the state, and the hospital system where she works said it stood by its finding that she followed privacy rules. The medical board rejected allegations that Bernard failed to properly report suspected child abuse and was unfit to have a medical license.
Some of Bernard’s colleagues criticized the Medical Licensing Board’s vote and the state attorney general’s pursuit of disciplinary action against her as trying to intimidate doctors in Indiana, where the Republican-dominated Legislature enacted an abortion ban last year that courts have put on hold.
Bernard’s revelation of the girl traveling to Indiana to receive abortion drugs turned her case into a flashpoint in the national abortion debate days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer. Some news outlets and Republican politicians falsely suggested Bernard fabricated the story until a 27-year-old man was charged with the rape in Columbus, Ohio. During an event at the White House, President Joe Biden nearly shouted his outrage over the case.
Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita, who is stridently anti-abortion, touted the board’s decision as supporting his arguments that Bernard broke “the trust between the doctor and patient.”
The board’s vote to reprimand Bernard and fine her $3,000 was far short of the medical license suspension that Rokita’s office asked the panel to impose.
Bernard’s lawyers argued Thursday that officials at Indiana University Health, her employer and the state’s largest hospital system, had reviewed last summer what she said about the girl’s treatment and found no violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
