From wire reports
INDIANAPOLIS – The lawyer for an Indiana doctor who has found herself at the center of a political firestorm after speaking out about a 10-year-old child abuse victim who traveled from Ohio for an abortion says her client provided proper treatment.
Attorney Kathleen DeLaney says Dr. Caitlin Bernard “has not violated any law, including patient privacy laws” in discussing the case.
Republican Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said Thursday he was investigating Bernard but offered no specific allegations of wrongdoing.
A 27-year-old man was charged in Columbus Wednesday with raping the girl.
Some Republicans who have backed stringent abortion restrictions imposed in Ohio after the Supreme Court ruling, including Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, initially questioned whether the story relayed by Bernard to the newspaper was real.
After telling Fox News on Monday that there was not “a whisper” of evidence supporting the case’s existence, Yost said his “heart aches for the pain suffered by this young child” and his investigative unit stands ready to support police in the case.
On Thursday, Yost faced intense backlash for his public statements, including a claim that medical exceptions in the Ohio “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban would have allowed the girl to receive her abortion in the state.
Apparently in response, he released a “legal explainer” detailing the law’s medical exceptions, which falling short of clearing up the issue
In the document, posted on Yost’s website, he states that Ohio’s law banning abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat would be “inapplicable” in the case of a medical emergency, defined as a condition that so complicates the pregnancy “as to necessitate the immediate performance or inducement of an abortion in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to avoid a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”
Abortion rights advocates and attorneys said the law’s medical exceptions – for the life of the mother, dire risks of bodily harm and ectopic pregnancies – would not have protected an Ohio doctor who performed an abortion for the girl from prosecution.
Story outran facts
A four-paragraph anecdote about the case touched on a white-hot issue due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion.
The speed at which the story moved also raised questions about journalist’s sourcing in stories and how stories can be quickly taken over by political pundits.
The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post issued corrections or clarifications to what they had written about the case.