A US doctor has been fined for revealing to the press that he helped perform an abortion on a 10-year-old girl after she was raped last year, Indiana officials said Thursday night.
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This state’s Physicians Council in North America considers Dr. Caitlin Bernard to have betrayed medical confidentiality by publishing this child’s case in the media without her or her guardians’ consent.
Caitlin Bernard explained to the press that she had the girl in the summer of 2022 in the capital of Indiana, Indianapolis, after contacting a colleague from neighboring Ohio, where the law prohibiting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy automatically entered. Troops. This comes after the US Supreme Court struck down constitutional protections for abortion rights last June.
But the girl, who was raped in May, was past this period. So she moved to Indiana, where abortion was legal up to 21 weeks.
But officials in the Republican-majority state remain hostile to abortion rights. A law outlawing the voluntary termination of pregnancy was passed last August, but is currently blocked by justice.
“This file is about medical confidentiality and the broken trust between a doctor and his patient,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rogita said in a statement. Pedophilia under local law for not reporting the girl’s case to the authorities.
The story was widely discussed in the media, crystallizing heated debates about abortion in America.
After more than ten hours of hearings, the Indiana Board of Physicians decided to fine Dr. Caitlin Bernard $3,000, but found her in compliance with legal procedures related to violence against minors and allowed her to continue practicing medicine.
“It is important that people know what the patients will be affected by the law that has been enacted,” the doctor argued before his colleagues.
