An Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim last year violated her young patient’s privacy by discussing the case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled Thursday night.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, catapulted into the national spotlight last year after she provided an abortion for an Ohio girl soon after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which left states free to severely restrict or outlaw abortion.
The state’s medical board voted to issue Dr. Bernard a letter of reprimand and a fine of $3,000. But it decided against stiffer penalties, which could have included suspension or probation, instead deciding that Dr. Bernard is fit to return to her practice.
The board also cleared her of other allegations that she failed to appropriately report the girl’s rape to authorities.
The decision was the culmination of a yearlong legal pursuit of 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 enacted a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Dr. Bernard told a reporter for the Indianapolis Star about the case during an abortion rights rally. She didn’t name the patient, but the case quickly became a flash point in the early, heated days of debate after the Supreme Court ruling, catching the attention of President Biden and turning conservative attention and ire toward Dr. Bernard.
“I don’t think she intended for this to go viral,” said Dr. John Strobel, the president of the board, calling Dr. Bernard a “good doctor.”
“But I do think we as physicians need to be more careful in this situation,” he said.
Mr. Rokita, who had filed the complaints against Dr. Bernard with the medical board, praised the outcome.
“This case was about patient privacy and the trust between the doctor and the patient that was broken,” Mr. Rokita said in a statement late Thursday. “What if it was your child or your patient or your sibling who was 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 stretched for more than 15 hours, ending just before midnight, Dr. Bernard said that her own comments did not reveal the patient’s protected health information. Rather, Dr. Bernard said, it was the fierce political battle that followed. Some conservatives doubted her story and drove a demand to confirm it. 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 obligation to educate the public about urgent matters of public health, especially questions about reproductive health — her area of expertise.
Last July, after Indiana scheduled a special legislative session on abortion, Dr. Bernard was concerned that lawmakers in her home state would pass strict restrictions on abortion access similar to the Ohio law that forced her 10-year-old patient to cross state lines.
Indiana passed legislation banning most abortions, with narrow 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 abortion access, and “did not anticipate” how much the public would focus on the Ohio girl’s case.
“I think its incredibly important for people to understand the real-word impacts of the laws of this country,” she said.
Dr. Peter Schwartz, a Pennsylvania OB-GYN and chair of 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” about issues of reproductive health, noting that she is one of just two doctors in Indiana with expertise in complicated obstetric cases like second-trimester abortions.
Attorneys on both sides of the hearing called experts on medical confidentiality to understand if Dr. Bernard violated 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 did not violate HIPAA rules because the patient was not identifiable based on the information that Dr. Bernard had shared publicly.
“The cause and effect that happened here was not: ‘Dr. Bernard’s story leads to the patient having her protected information shared,’” 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 competent doctor, and I would submit that she is exactly the doctor that people would want their children to see under these circumstances,” said Ms. Morical.