Indiana Court of Appeals Affirms Decision Blocking Release of Abortion Patients’ Health Information
Ruling Maintains the Status Quo as Case Proceeds in the Superior Court
12.08.25 – (PRESS RELEASE) On Friday, the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision that blocks the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH) from releasing records containing detailed information about abortion patients’ demographics, medical history, and medical treatment to abortion opponents on request.
The lower court had entered a preliminary injunction in March 2025 that prohibits IDOH from releasing the records, known as “terminated pregnancy reports” or “TPRs,” after two Indiana OB-GYNS, Dr. Caitlin Bernard and Dr. Caroline Rouse, filed a lawsuit to protect the privacy and confidentiality of their patients’ health information. Their lawsuit followed an earlier suit by an anti-abortion group seeking release of the records that ended with a settlement in which IDOH agreed to turn over detailed patient information.
In Friday’s ruling, the Court of Appeals held that TPRs constitute patient medical records, which enjoy substantial privacy protections under the law.
“We welcome the appellate court’s ruling and its affirmation of our patients’ right to privacy,” said Drs. Bernard and Rouse in a joint statement. “Doctors cannot provide safe, ethical care when patients’ personal health information is at risk of being exposed. This decision strengthens the safeguards that allow us to continue to provide evidence-based reproductive healthcare. We will continue to stand against any state or federal attempts to undermine the rights of patients and the doctors who care for them.”
The Court of Appeals also noted that IDOH’s settlement agreement is inconsistent with an earlier ruling by the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, creating a Catch-22 for the plaintiffs and other doctors in the state. At the urging of Indiana’s Attorney General, the Medical Licensing Board had disciplined Dr. Bernard in 2023 for disclosing that she provided abortion care to a 10-year-old from Ohio who was unable to obtain care in her home state following enactment of an abortion ban there. Ohio voters subsequently approved a ballot initiative that enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. The minimal information Dr. Bernard shared about her Ohio patient pales in comparison to the extensive information contained in TPRs; yet, the same Attorney General represented IDOH in crafting its agreement to release those records. The Court of Appeals declared emphatically that: “[T]he State’s contradictory positions create legal uncertainty that itself constitutes injury. Doctors struggle to provide abortion care and to submit TPRs while uncertain of their intertwined obligations under the statutes that govern their professional conduct.”
“Anti-abortion extremists should not have access to patients’ medical records because of a backroom deal struck by the Attorney General and Health Department,” said Stephanie Toti, Executive Director of the Lawyering Project. “The State cannot make an end run around legal protections for patient privacy by requiring doctors to disclose protected information to government agencies and then releasing that information to the public.”
Due to the state’s strict abortion ban, only 146 people were able to obtain abortion care from Indiana providers in 2024, many with rare medical conditions, thus raising the risk that TPRs could be used to identify patients. IDOH and Indiana’s Public Access Counselor, a government official with expertise on the state’s public records law, previously concluded that the information contained in TPRs could be reverse engineered to identify individual patients, a fact the Court of Appeals underscored in Friday’s ruling.
The case will now return to the lower court for further proceedings. The plaintiffs are represented by the Lawyering Project and Kathrine D. Jack of the Jack Law Office LLC.
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