The Indiana physician who provided an abortion last month to a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who could not legally obtain one in her home state was once targeted in a vicious kidnapping threat against her daughter, The Guardian reported Friday.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard also was — and continues to be — ominously listed on the website of a militant anti-abortion group in South Bend, Indiana, called Right To Life Michiana, which has ties to Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Bernard testified in a court case last year that she was forced to stop performing abortions at a clinic in South Bend after the FBI alerted the local Planned Parenthood office that a kidnapping threat had been made against Bernard’s daughter, according to The Guardian.
At the time, her name was listed among abortion doctors targeted by the Michiana group, along with information about her place of work. All of the information is still on the site.
In 2006, Amy Coney Barrett signed a statement published in an advertisement by a group that would later merge with Michiana, saying that all signatories “defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death,” according to The Guardian. It also called Roe v. Wade, which protected women’s right to abortion for 50 years, “barbaric.”