Two OB-GYNs, Caitlin Bernard, MD, and Caroline Rouse, MD, filed a complaint earlier this month after Indiana settled another lawsuit with anti-abortion group Voices for Life by agreeing to release the records upon request.
Physicians are required to file TPRs after performing an abortion in the state, and have been a target of other lawsuits in Indiana after the state instituted its near-total abortion ban in 2022. Marion County Judge James Joven said in his decision that the documents do not fall under public records law, according to the report.
“A [TPR] is created by a medical provider as the consequence of a medical service, and it contains highly sensitive information about a patient’s demographics, medical history and medical care that was obtained by the provider while treating the patient,” the judge wrote in his ruling. “The statute directs the Department to compile a ‘public report’ based on data contained in the TPRs on a quarterly basis, suggesting that the TPRs themselves are not meant to be public.”
He added that releasing the reports would interfere with patients’ privacy and the patient-physician relationship.