Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita says that abortion reports aren’t medical records, and that they should be available to the public in the same way that death certificates are. While Rokita pushes for public reports, New Hampshire lawmakers are fighting over a Republican bill to collect and publish abortion data, and U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville has introduced a bill that would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to collect and provide data on the abortions performed at its facilities. Just last week, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed legislation that would have required abortion providers to ask patients invasive and detailed questions about why they were getting abortions, and provide those answers in a report to the state.   All of these moves are part of a broader strategy that weaponizes abortion data to stigmatize patients and to prosecute providers. And while most states have some kind of abortion reporting law, legislators are increasingly trying to expand the scope of the data, and use it to dismantle women’s privacy.

Rokita’s ‘advisory opinion’, for example, argues that abortion data collected by the state isn’t private medical information and that in order to prosecute abortion providers, he needs detailed reports to be public. In the past, the state has issued reports on each individual abortion. But as a result of Indiana’s ban, there are only a handful of abortions being performed in the state. As such, the Department of Health decided to release aggregate reports to protect patient confidentiality, noting that individual reports could be “reverse engineered to identify patients—especially in smaller communities.” Rokita—best known for his harassment campaign against Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the abortion provider who treated a 10-year-old rape victim—is furious over the change. He says the only way he can arrest and prosecute people is if he gets tips from third parties, presumably anti-abortion groups that scour the abortion reports for alleged wrongdoing. He wants the state to either restore public individual reports, or to allow his office to go after abortion providers without a complaint by a third party. (Meaning, he could pursue investigations against doctors and hospitals without cause.)

Most troubling, though, is his insistence that women’s private abortion information isn’t private at all. Even though individual reports could be used to identify patients, Rokita claims that the terminated pregnancy reports [TPRs] aren’t medical records, and that they “do not belong to the patient.” [...] As I flagged last month, abortion reporting is becoming more and more important to anti-choice lawmakers and groups. Project 2025 includes an entire section on abortion reporting, for example, and major anti-abortion organizations like the Charlotte Lozier Institute and Americans United for Life want to mandate more detailed reports.

[...]  As is the case with funding for crisis pregnancy centers and legislation about ‘prenatal counseling’ or ‘perinatal hospice care’, Republicans are advancing abortion reporting mandates under the guise of protecting women. And in a moment when voters are furious over abortion bans, anti-choice lawmakers and organizations very much need Americans to believe that lie. We have to make clear that state GOPs aren’t just banning abortion, but enacting any and every punitive policy that they can—especially those that strip us of our medical privacy. After all, it was less than a year ago that 19 Republican Attorneys General wanted the ability to investigate the out-of-state medical records of abortion patients. Did we really think they were going to stop there?

@jessicavalenti writes a solid column in her Abortion, Every Day blog that the GOP's agenda to erode patient privacy of those seeking abortions is a dangerous one.

Todd Rokita is still investigating Caitlin Bernard for providing an abortion to a 10 year old. Let that sink in. He wants to punish a doctor for providing an abortion to a child. Now, Republicans and other antiabortioners have switched to insisting the child could have gotten the abortion in her home state. They realized calling a 10 year old a liar and then saying she should have been forced to give birth doesn't resonate well.

But here they are investigating the doctor who performed the abortion. Doctors were upfront with forced birthers that the exceptions were vague. They were ignored. Doctors were upfront with forced birthers that fear of prosecution would make doctors afraid to perform abortions in cases where legal guidance was vague. They were ignored.

Now a doctor who undoubtedly saved a child from disfiguration or death is being investigated. No matter what forced birthers say, they are not sending the message that 10 year olds should be allowed abortions.

Todd Rokita (R-IN) Indiana Attorney General

Damn... Todd is getting hotter by the day.

Todd Rokita (R-IL) Indiana Attorney General

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) announced that he and six other state attorneys general have sent a letter advising Target that their Pride display could violate state laws. The letter accuses Target of violating laws that “protect children from harmful content meant to sexualize them and prohibit gender transitions of children.”

The at-times incomprehensible letter accuses Target of selling Pride gear for kids, promoting products from a brand that sells “Satanist-Inspired” merchandise, and helping GLSEN, an LGBTQ+ youth advocacy group that the attorneys general say has a “purpose of undermining parents’ constitutional and statutory rights by supporting ‘secret gender transitions for kids.'”

In May, it became something of a trend for conservative influencers to record themselves going into Target to express disgust at the store’s LGBTQ+ Pride displays, sometimes vandalizing them or harassing Target employees.

The attorneys’ general letter appears to draw inspiration from those videos, citing some of the products that conservatives were outraged by, including a tucking swimsuit sold in adult sizes, which some conservatives thought would turn kids transgender. The letter also complains about “LGBT-themed onesies, bibs, and overalls,” all products the conservative influencers expressed distaste for. The letter also mentions an adult T-shirt with a drag queen on it.

The letter says that Target carried products with “anti-Christian designs such as pentagrams, horned skulls, and other Satanic products,” citing a Reuters article. The Reuters article, though, doesn’t back the Republicans’ claims and actually says that Target was selling products from the brand Abprallen, which has associated in the past with British designer Erik Carnell, who has sold the above-mentioned Satanic merchandise through his own channels.

While the connection between Target and Carnell doesn’t seem strong enough to include in a letter sent for legal reasons, the idea that Target is selling Satanic products was part of an internet rumor earlier this year. AI-generated images of T-shirts with inverted pentagrams and goat heads and of a store display with a red, goat-headed mannequin were shared on social media last month and caused outrage in conservative Facebook groups, even though the images were fake and the products weren’t really being sold by Target.

The letter states that Target “has no duty to fill stores with objectionable goods, let alone endorse or feature them in attention-grabbing displays at the behest of radical activists.” It says that Target has a duty to its shareholders that it violated because some conservatives said they were boycotting Target on social media and therefore the Pride displays “negatively affected Target’s stock price.”

“It is likely more profitable to sell the type of Pride that enshrines the love of the United States,” the letter states. “Target’s Pride Campaign alienates whereas Pride in our country unites.”

It’s unclear what the legal argument is in the letter since businesses make unprofitable decisions all the time without facing prosecution. The letter says that “as the chief legal officers of our States, we are charged with enforcing state laws protecting children and safeguarding parental rights” including laws that “penalize the ‘sale or distribution… of obscene matter.'” But it doesn’t threaten to prosecute Target or its executives for selling “obscene” rainbow onesies.

Furthermore, it cites Indiana’s recently passed ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender youth, but Target wasn’t selling hormones or puberty blockers in its Pride displays. The gender-affirming healthcare ban doesn’t ban people under the age of 18 from identifying as LGBTQ+.

The letter is signed by Rokita and the attorneys general of Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Carolina. They are all Republicans.

“Transanity doesn’t sell,” Rokita said in announcing the letter. “Let’s all unite around pride in America instead of falling into the trap of dividing along lines of identity politics.”

I would hate it if people wasted Indiana's numbnuts AG Todd Rokita's time by spamming in.gov/attorneygeneral/education-liberty

It's only to be used for its intended purpose: Calling out underpaid public school teachers as godless Commies for the thought crime of teaching from books that have people of color and LGBTQ+ people in them. Because that's totally not weaponizing our own tax dollars against us.

A disciplinary hearing is underway in Indiana to decide whether to penalize a doctor who spoke publicly about providing an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, has accused Dr. Caitlin Bernard of failing to report child abuse and violating patient privacy by speaking to a reporter about the young girl's case. In a written complaint in November, Rokita asked the Indiana Medical Licensing Board to impose a disciplinary action on Bernard accordingly.

In July, The Indianapolis Star reported that Bernard had taken a call from a doctor regarding a suspected case of child abuse involving the 10-year-old girl. The child was just over six weeks pregnant. Ohio prohibits abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, under a law that was enacted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The girl went to Indiana to receive care from Bernard, the Star reported, where abortion was legal at the time. Since then, Indiana has passed a near-total abortion ban, though a judge subsequently put the law on hold.

"I was surprised that people think that young girls are not, unfortunately, frequently raped and become pregnant," Bernard said during the Thursday hearing. 

"The idea that this was something that someone would make up or was a lie, or is something that doesn't happen, was very surprising to me."

Daniel Villarreal at LGBTQ Nation:

Republican attorneys general in Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas have been using “abusive legal demands” to collect transgender patients’ medical records in pursuit of “ideological and political goals,” according to a 10-page report recently released by the staff of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee’s Democratic majority.

The report accuses the attorneys general of using misleading legal pretexts to make civil investigative demands of gender-affirming healthcare providers. The investigations have contributed to hostile anti-LGBTQ+ social and political climates and have also worsened queer people’s mental health, leading to “suicidal ideation, severe depression, and intense anxiety,” the report added. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s investigation alleged clinicians’ misuse of Medicaid funds as a “money-making scheme.” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey both alleged that gender-affirming clinics had violated consumer protection laws. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton demanded records from clinics in his state, Georgia, and Washington state without ever explaining why. All four states mentioned above have passed bans on gender-affirming care for minors. “In their sweeping anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigns, Attorney General offices demand a host of invasive items such as unredacted physical and mental health records, photographs of children’s bodies, correspondence to hospitals’ general email addresses for LGBTQIA+ patients, and lists of people referred for transgender health care,” the report stated.

A 10-page report from the Senate Finance Committee revealed that 4 Republican AGs committed abusive privacy-eroding practices to obtain trans patient data as part of their crusade against gender-affirming care for trans minors.

The 4 Republican Attorneys General named in the report are: Todd Rokita (IN), Andrew Bailey (MO), Ken Paxton (TX), and Jonathan Skrmetti (TN).

This is monstrous. They're angry that a doctor performed an abortion for a 10 year old! They are less concerned over a child being raped and impregnated than the fact that the child was not forced to give birth!

Antiabortioners, don't pretend you care about children.

Todd Rokita ® Indiana Attorney General

Todd Rokita (R-IL) Indiana Attorney General

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is a gaslighting, scapegoating, transphobic, pandering piece of trash. Pass it on.

The Indiana doctor who performed an abortion on the 10-year-old Ohio rape victim is suing Todd Rokita, the Indiana Republican attorney general, for defamation.

This incident plus the US Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade should be further reasons why WE REALLY NEED TO PAY THE FUCK ATTENTION TO OUR STATE GOVERNMENTS.

Too many people still think that state governments do little other than issue drivers licenses and put up road signs. But states have a big say in healthcare – including abortion and pandemic response. They are the entities who have the most impact on education; those “don’t say gay” laws and attempts to revise history to pretend racism doesn’t exist come from state governments. And as the primary administrators of elections, they can find ways to suppress the votes of young people and people of color.

It’s necessary to follow closely what’s going on in your state government and your state legislature in particular. It’s always easier to prevent odious laws than to reverse them after they’re on the books. And the best way to prevent odious legislation is to defeat Republicans running for state legislature.

If you don’t know who represents you in your state capitol building, find out here...

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

And if there are statewide elections in your state this year, please pay attention to who is running for state attorney general and secretary of state. You don’t want a dickhead like Indiana’s Todd Rokita in your state.

Former IU dean asks Supreme Court to investigate Todd Rokita after comments about doctor