Indianapolis’s Fox59 reports:
After Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita threatened to go after the license of an Indiana physician who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio, documents obtained by FOX59 through a public record request proved the physician not only filed a terminated pregnancy report but filed the report within the required timeframe.
The terminated pregnancy report, obtained by FOX59’s Angela Ganote, shows that Caitlin Bernard, an Indiana obstetrician-gynecologist, reported the abortion on July 2, two days after the abortion was performed and within the three days required for terminations to be reported to the Department of Child Service and the Indiana Department of Health.
In the report, Bernard also indicated that the child suffered abuse.
National Review can confirm Fox59’s report that a public records request shows Bernard filed the legally required form.
The gut-wrenching story of abuse has drawn national attention since it was first recounted by Bernard in the Indy Star on July 1, but doubts about the story’s veracity were raised when both Snopes and the Washington Post Fact Checker reported last week that they couldn’t independently corroborate it. While Bernard appeared on MSNBC on July 6, she did not give interviews to Snopes and the Post for articles published, respectively, on July 5 and July 9. President Biden repeated the story at a July 8 White House press conference. A statement from Bernard affirming she had filed the legally required forms would have been one clear sign that would have helped confirm that the story was true without jeopardizing patient confidentiality, but on July 12 Bernard told National Review in a text message that she had “no information to share” when asked if she had filed the form. On July 13, the Columbus Dispatch confirmed the story was true and that an arrest had been made in the case. According to the Dispatch, the alleged rapist is a 27-year-old illegal immigrant. On the form about the abortion filed with Indiana’s state department of health and department of child services, the section requiring an “approximate age” of the father “if age not known” lists the age of 17.