The Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a ten-year-old rape victim sent a letter to Indiana officials Tuesday threatening to sue state attorney general Todd Rokita for defamation.
In the letter, Caitlin Bernard’s attorney Kathleen DeLaney claimed the OB/GYN suffered from Rokita’s false public statements about her profession.
“Statements that Dr. Bernard has a ‘history of failing to report,’ which Mr. Rokita indicated would constitute a crime, made in the absence of reasonable investigation, serve no legitimate law enforcement purpose. Given the current political atmosphere in the United States, Mr. Rokita’s comments were intended to heighten public condemnation of Dr. Bernard, who legally provided legitimate medical care,” the letter stated.
DeLaney told NPR in an interview that Rokita launched a “smear campaign” against the doctor.
“He is wrongly accusing her of misconduct in her profession, so we want that smear campaign to stop,” she told the outlet. “We want him and his office to stop intimidating and harassing healthcare providers generally who are simply doing the job that they went to medical school to do.”
Rokita went on Fox News July 13 and claimed Bernard has a history of “failing to report” abortion cases and said that she’s an “abortion activist acting as a doctor.” Bernard did report the abortion in time, however, records showed.
Indiana AG now says they are looking into the doctor pic.twitter.com/MMFsvBRRXs
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 13, 2022
Initially, the veracity of the story and Bernard’s claims were questioned by several media outlets, after Bernard, the sole source in the story, refused to answer provide further details that might corroborate her claims.
DeLaney previously filed a cease and desist against Rokita on behalf of Bernard, saying he made “false and misleading comments” about her on television.
Kathleen DeLaney of DeLaney & DeLaney LLC released the following statement regarding a cease and desist sent to Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita on behalf of her client Caitlin Bernard, M.D. pic.twitter.com/qMNmgqLDIX
— Angela Ganote (@angelaganote) July 15, 2022
The possible lawsuit comes weeks after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, allowing a six-week abortion ban to take place in Ohio, where the ten-year-old girl was from. The girl drove across state lines to Indiana to perform the abortion, though Rokita insists that she would have qualified for a legal abortion under Indiana law, which provides an exception to protect the health of the mother.
The story became the focus of national media attention, with even President Joe Biden making a comment.
“She was forced to have to travel out of the state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life,” Biden said. “Ten years old — 10 years old! — raped, six weeks pregnant, already traumatized, was forced to travel to another state.”
Twenty-seven-year-old Gershon Fuentes, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, was charged with rape after allegedly impregnating the girl and was detained on a $2 million bond.