Doctor sues Indiana AG over bids to access records

INDIANAPOLIS >> An Indianapolis doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio is suing Indiana's attorney general, seeking to block him from using allegedly “frivolous” consumer complaints to issue subpoenas seeking patients' confidential medical records.

The lawsuit targeting Attorney General Todd Rokita was filed Thursday in Marion County on behalf of Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, her medical partner, Dr. Amy Caldwell, and their patients.

It alleges that Rokita has issued subpoenas seeking the medical records of patients based on complaints from people who have never been a patient of either Bernard or Caldwell and “who lack any personal knowledge of the alleged circumstances giving rise to the complaints.”

The suit contends that Rokita has “completely ignored” a state requirement that his office first determine that consumer complaints have “merit” before he can investigate physicians and other licensed professionals and that his conduct “violates numerous Indiana statutes.”

“The Attorney General has wholly ignored the General Assembly's finetuned structure for handling consumer complaints regarding licensed professionals and has engaged in precisely the type of overbearing, harassing conduct that the General Assembly sought to prohibit,” the suit states.

Bernard received widespread attention after she gave an interview to The Indianapolis Star about the 10-year-old girl, who traveled to Indiana from Ohio for the abortion after a so-called fetal heartbeat law took effect in Ohio in June after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Such laws ban abortions from the time a fetus' cardiac activity can be detected, which is typically around the sixth week of pregnancy. A 27-year-old man was charged in Columbus, Ohio, with raping the girl, confirming the existence of a case that was initially met with skepticism by some news outlets and Republican politicians.