Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indiana physician who supplied abortion care to a 10-year-old rape sufferer from Ohio, received a $3,000 fine and letter of reprimand on Thursday night after a day-long listening to earlier than Indiana’s Medical Licensing Board. Nearly all of the board voted to penalize Bernard after figuring out that she had violated privateness legal guidelines by talking to the media concerning the case—which she did to boost consciousness of literal kids having to journey out of state to acquire life-saving well being care.
This final result comes almost a yr after Bernard’s story entered the nationwide highlight, when she spoke to a reporter concerning the care she had supplied to a toddler rape sufferer from Ohio who had been denied care by her state’s near-total abortion ban. On the time, Ohio’s ban—currently blocked in courtroom—had simply taken impact after the autumn of Roe v. Wade, and it provided no rape exceptions.
Because the baby’s story went viral and sparked nationwide outrage, prime Republicans together with Indiana Lawyer Common Todd Rokita (R) and others very publicly questioned the story’s veracity and the credibility of a kid rape sufferer. After the kid’s alleged rapist was arrested, Rokita falsely claimed Bernard hadn’t reported the abortion and the woman’s sexual assault to the state (once more, this very a lot wasn’t true). Nonetheless, Rokita’s workplace started investigating Bernard and final fall filed the complaint with the state Medical Licensing Board, main the cost to focus on and punish the physician.
Indiana’s Medical Board is appointed by the Gov. Eric Holcomb (R), who signed an abortion ban that’s at the moment blocked in courtroom. Two of the board’s seven members are reportedly donors to Rokita.
The listening to and subsequent penalties Bernard faces are transparently political. For all of the allegations thrown on the physician, the state’s Medical Licensing Board may solely decide that she’d supposedly violated privateness legal guidelines by speaking to reporters. However as Bernard’s lawyer, Alice Morical, pointed out on the listening to, physicians can speak to the media, and Bernard shared no protected well being details about her affected person. A slew of witnesses affirmed that Bernard had complied with affected person privateness legal guidelines and likewise labored with hospital employees to make sure the kid’s sexual assault was investigated by regulation enforcement officers.
On the listening to, Bernard emphasised that it’s within the public’s curiosity to know concerning the lived penalties of abortion bans, and the cruelty and violence inflicted on sufferers—particularly baby rape victims. “I feel it’s extremely necessary for folks to grasp the real-world impacts of the legal guidelines of this nation, about abortion or in any other case,” the physician mentioned. “It’s necessary for folks to know what sufferers should undergo due to laws that’s being handed.”
Survivors, who already face staggering obstacles within the medical system, are particularly weak to the rigidity and brutality of bans.
Anti-abortion leaders know the way despicable the impacts of their legal guidelines are, and their quest to punish Bernard is an try to hide this from the general public by intimidating suppliers into silence. “This isn’t the primary occasion of abortion suppliers being senselessly focused by the state and it’ll not be the final,” Dr. Katie McHugh, an Indiana-based board member with Physicians for Reproductive Well being, instructed Jezebel in a press release. “Our neighborhood is in solidarity with Dr. Bernard. We’d like skilled well being care suppliers like her to be offering well being care to sufferers, not wrapped up in political video games aiming to make it not possible for her to maintain offering fundamental care to our neighborhood.”
Because the state of Indiana clamps down on Bernard for sharing restricted particulars to the media concerning the plight of a kid rape sufferer impacted by abortion bans, satirically sufficient, Indiana itself is one in all several states that requires providers to report details about their sufferers’ abortions to the state. Innocuous as these state reporting necessities could seem, as journalist Garnet Henderson has reported, these legal guidelines create danger for sufferers to be surveilled and criminalized. Indiana’s Medical Licensing Board clearly isn’t overly involved with privateness, and is simply eager about punishing Bernard.
The board now has 90 days to finalize its decision, after which Bernard could have 30 days to attraction the choice in Marion Superior Courtroom.