Remember the 10 year old girl who had to travel to Indiana for an abortion? And they tried to prosecute the doctor who helped her? Well:
Indiana’s attorney general has dropped a lawsuit that accused the state’s largest hospital system of violating patient privacy laws when a doctor told a newspaper that a 10-year-old Ohio girl had traveled to Indiana for an abortion.
A federal judge last week approved Attorney General Todd Rokita’s request to dismiss his lawsuit, which the Republican had filed last year against Indiana University Health and IU Healthcare Associates, The Indianapolis Star reported.
The suit accused the hospital system of violating HIPAA, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and a state law, for not protecting patient information in the case of a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to Indiana to receive abortion drugs.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard ‘s attorneys later that she shared no personally identifiable information about the girl, and no such details were reported in the Star’s story on July 1, 2022, but it became a flashpoint in the abortion debate days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that June.
A federal judge in Indianapolis initially granted IU Health’s motion to dismiss the case in June, prompting Rokita to file an amended complaint in July. His office then sought the case’s dismissal last week, writing that the state’s initial complaints have been satisfied by actions IU Health has taken since The Star first reported on the girl’s case.
These actions include continuing to train employees not to talk about patients in public spaces and informing employees that if they are contacted by a reporter, they must inform the public relations or communications departments before responding, Rokita’s dismissal motion said.
“We are pleased the information this office sought over two years ago has finally been provided and the necessary steps have been taken to accurately and consistently train their workforce to protect patients and their health care workers,” Rokita said Monday in a statement.
However, IU Health said it has always had such practices in place, and it’s disheartened by the claim that these were corrective actions made in response to Rokita’s suit.
[…]
Indiana’s medical licensing board reprimanded Bernard in May 2023, saying she didn’t abide by privacy laws by talking publicly about the girl’s treatment.
It was far short of the medical license suspension Rokita’s office sought, and IU Health’s own internal investigation found that Bernard did not violate privacy laws.
The Indiana Supreme Court, meanwhile, reprimanded Rokita and fined him $250 for making statements about Bernard that violated rules of professional conduct for attorneys.
Rokita is a terrible person. But at least he seems to be smart enough to have figured out hat he wasn’t going to win this one. Nonetheless, they did manage to sully the reputation of this compassionate doctor who helped this poor child which is grotesque and disgusting. But that’s just how they roll.
BY the way, Indiana may still be a throwback state but there are others that are fighting this at the ballot box. Here are two more:
Missouri and Arizona join six states that are voting on abortion rights in the upcoming presidential election.On Tuesday, Missouri state officials greenlit a ballot initiative, allowing residents to determine the fate of the state’s total abortion ban. On Monday, Arizona officials said they received enough petition signatures to put an abortion ballot measure before voters this November.
The ballot measures in question allow voters to decide if the right to an abortion should be enshrined in the states’ constitutions.
More than two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, 14 states have passed total abortion bans while others have moved to protect reproductive rights at the state level. Missouri is one of several states that passed a total ban on abortion. Arizona passed a law in 2022 that bans abortion after 15 weeks.
In states that allow voter-driven ballot measures, abortion rights groups have used the tool to push back against restrictions.
Dawn Penich, a spokesperson for the organizers of Arizona’s abortion ballot measure recently told USA TODAY, “A very broad majority supports this issue, and that’s whether we were in rural communities or cities, whether we were in largely red, conservative districts or more progressive areas of the state.”
Trump says the issue is no longer salient. I don’t think so.