OB-GYN who provided abortion for 10-year-old rape victim sues Republican Indiana AG
03 November 2022
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, one of the most disturbing abortion-related post-Roe horror stories involved a ten-year-old rape victim — who was from Ohio but traveled to Indiana to get an abortion because of restrictions in her state. The Indianapolis-based OB-GYN who performed the abortion was Dr. Caitlin Bernard, and she is now suing Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, for launching “overbroad” investigations of doctors providing abortions in his state.
According to CBS New reporter Melissa Quinn, “The lawsuit, filed by lawyer Kathleen DeLaney on behalf of Bernard and her medical partner Dr. Amy Caldwell in Indiana Commercial Court in Marion County, claims Rokita opened investigations into seven consumer complaints filed against Bernard after she came under scrutiny for performing the medication-induced abortion on June 30, days after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade.”
Bernard, Quinn notes, was “thrust into the national spotlight after she told the Indianapolis Star that a child abuse doctor in Ohio had called her about the pregnant 10-year-old, who was seeking an abortion out of state due to Ohio's near-total abortion ban.”
“A man was arrested and charged with rape two weeks later,” Quinn explains. “Ohio's abortion law, which bans the procedure once an embryonic heartbeat is detected, typically around six weeks of pregnancy, took effect after the Supreme Court issued its decision overturning Roe.”
The case of the 10-year-old rape victim underscores the typo of chaos that has followed the High Court’s controversial Dobbs ruling. When the U.S. Supreme Court, under the late Chief Justice Warren Burger, issued its Roe decision in 1973, a national legal standard for abortion was established. But thanks to Dobbs, abortion’s legality or illegality now varies from state to state.
Quinn reports, “After opening investigations into the complaints, Bernard's lawyers said Rokita and Scott Barnhart, director of the Consumer Protection Division of the attorney general's office, issued ‘sweepingly broad document subpoenas’ in August to a hospital system seeking the full medical file of the child. The subpoenas, they wrote, ‘serve no legitimate investigative purpose.’”