Indiana rebukes doctor who performed abortion on 10-year-old rape victim
An Indiana doctor who aborted a 10-year-old rape victim last year violated her young patient’s privacy by discussing the matter with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled Thursday evening.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, came to the national spotlight last year after she performed an abortion for an Ohio girl shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which left states free to allow abortion. severely restrict or prohibit it.
The state medical board voted to appoint Dr. Bernard a letter of reprimand and a $3,000 fine. But it decided against harsher penalties, including suspension or probation, and decided instead that Dr. Bernard was fit to return to her practice.
The board also cleared her of other charges that she failed to properly report the girl’s rape to authorities.
The decision was the culmination of years of legal action against Dr. Bernard by the state’s Attorney General, Todd Rokita, a Republican who opposes abortion.
The Ohio girl had traveled to Indiana for the procedure after her home state banned most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Dr. Bernard told a reporter for the Indianapolis Star about the case at an abortion rights rally. She didn’t name the patient, but the case quickly became a flashpoint in the early, heated days of debate following the Supreme Court ruling, drawing President Biden’s attention and turning conservative attention and anger toward Dr. Bernard.
“I don’t think she intended this to go viral,” said Dr. John Strobel, the chairman of the board, who Dr. Bernard a “good doctor”.
“But I do think we as doctors need to be more careful in this situation,” he said.
Mr. Rokita, who filed the complaints against Dr. Bernard had submitted to the medical board, praising the outcome.
“This case was about patient privacy and trust between doctor and patient that had been broken,” Mr Rokita said in a statement late Thursday. “What if it was your child or your patient or your sibling going through a sensitive medical crisis, and the doctor, who you thought was on your side, ran to the press for political reasons?”
Dr. Bernard has criticized Mr Rokita for turning the case into a “political stunt”.
During the hearing, which lasted more than 15 hours and ended just before midnight, Dr. Bernard that her own comments did not reveal the patient’s proprietary health information. Dr. Bernard said earlier that it was the fierce political battle that followed. Some conservatives doubted her story and demanded confirmation. Eventually, the man accused of raping the girl appeared in court and was linked to her case.
Dr. Bernard, who has publicly advocated for abortion rights, said she had an ethical duty to educate the public about pressing public health issues, especially questions about reproductive health – her area of expertise.
Last July, after Indiana scheduled a special legislative session on abortion, Dr. Bernard worried that lawmakers in her home state would place strict restrictions on access to abortion, similar to the Ohio law that forced her 10-year-old patient to cross state lines.
Indiana has passed legislation banning most abortions, with minor exceptions for rape and incest. That law is on hold pending a legal challenge. Abortion is currently legal in Indiana up to 22 weeks.
Dr. Bernard said she wanted to highlight the potential consequences of laws restricting access to abortion, and “didn’t foresee” how much the public would focus on the Ohio girl’s case.
“I think it’s incredibly important for people to understand the real impact of this country’s laws,” she said.
Dr. Peter Schwartz, a Pennsylvania obstetrician and president of the American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, supported Dr. Bernard’s decision to speak out about the Ohio patient.
Dr. Schwartz said Dr. Bernard had an “affirmative obligation to speak out” on reproductive health issues, noting that she is one of only two doctors in Indiana with expertise in complicated obstetric cases such as second-trimester abortions.
Lawyers on both sides of the hearing called medical confidentiality experts to understand whether Dr. Bernard violated the guidelines of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, which governs the protection of patient privacy.
Dr. Bernard’s employer, Indiana University Health, found that she was not violating HIPAA rules because the patient was not identifiable from the information Dr. Bernard shared publicly.
“The cause and effect that happened here wasn’t, ‘Dr. Bernard’s story leads the patient to share her protected information,” said Alice Morical, the doctor’s attorney.
But members of the medical board, made up of six doctors and one attorney — all appointed by the governor — decided that, taken together, the details Dr. Bernard provided about the patient – including her age, her rape, her home state and her abortion – qualified as identifying information.
“Dr. Bernard is a skilled and skilled doctor, and I would say she is exactly the doctor that people would want their children to see in these circumstances,” Ms. Morical said.