The Indiana state attorney general has launched an investigation into the doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim.
According to Kathleen DeLaney, a lawyer acting for the doctor, Caitlin Bernard, a notice from the Indiana attorney general, Todd Rokita, regarding his investigation arrived on Tuesday.
“We are in the process of reviewing this information. It’s unclear to us what is the nature of the investigation and what authority he has to investigate Dr Bernard,” DeLaney told CNN. The Guardian has contacted DeLaney for additional comments.
On 2 July, Bernard reported a 30 June medication abortion for her 10-year-old patient, who had been obliged to travel to the state from Ohio, after that state followed the US supreme court’s overturning a few days earlier of the federal right to an abortion and banned the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.
According to reports reviewed by the Indianapolis Star and WXIN-TV of Indianapolis, Bernard’s reporting of her treatment to the health authorities came within the three-day requirement set by state law for individuals aged below 16 who undergo an abortion. The reports added that the patient who sought the abortion had become pregnant as the result of sexual abuse.
A 27-year-old man has since been charged in Columbus, Ohio, in connection with abuse of the girl.
Since the abortion, Bernard became the center of a political firestorm from rightwing media outlets and Republican politicians after Joe Biden expressed sympathy for the girl when he signed an executive order earlier this month aimed at safeguarding abortion access after the supreme court’s action in upending the historic 1973 abortion case Roe v Wade.
According to DeLaney, Bernard is considering taking legal action against “those who have smeared my client”, including Rokita, who previously said that he would investigate whether she violated abortion reporting or child abuse notification laws.
In a statement to the Guardian on Wednesday, Rokita said: “The baseless defamation claim and other accusations are really just attempts to distract, intimidate and obstruct my office’s monumental progress to save lives. It will take a lot more than that to intimidate us.
“The doctor alone brought this case to the press. She used a 10-year-old girl – a child rape victim’s personal trauma – to push her political ideology. She was aided and abetted by a fake news media who conveniently misquoted my words to try to give abortionists and their readership numbers an extra boost.”
Rokita added: “My heart breaks for this little girl.”
According to Indiana University Health, where Bernard practices as an obstetrician-gynecologist, “IU Health conducted an investigation with the full cooperation of Dr Bernard and other IU Health team members. IU Health’s investigation found Dr Bernard in compliance with privacy laws.”
Pregnancy termination forms that Bernard filed with the Indiana department of health, which Indy Star obtained and reviewed, showed that Bernard indicated the girl was six weeks pregnant at the time of her abortion and that Bernard did not know the age of the person who impregnated her.
Bernard’s attorney said that she “took every appropriate and proper action in accordance with the law and both her medical and ethical training as a physician”.
Meanwhile, a Wyoming judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked that state’s abortion ban on the day it took effect, siding with a firebombed women’s health clinic and others who argued the ban would violate the state constitution and harm healthcare workers and their patients.
And lawmakers in West Virginia debated an abortion ban, drawing an at times raucous crowd of hundreds to the state capitol, where dozens spoke against the bill on the house floor.
Wyoming’s court action puts it among several states including Kentucky, Louisiana and Utah where judges temporarily blocked implementation of “trigger laws” while lawsuits play out. On Friday, a Louisiana appellate court allowed the state to enforce its abortion ban while a lawsuit challenging it played out.
Such trigger laws are designed to automatically implement pre-prepared abortion ban laws after Roe was felled and the power over the right to abortion was returned from the federal government to the states.
Later on Wednesday, a North Dakota judge blocked a trigger law there that was set to outlaw abortion in the state starting on Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
