Once upon a time, it was possible for fully functioning adults to hold public office.
That no longer seems to be the case.
The sorry spectacle accompanying the backroom decision to deny Dr. Caitlin Bernard a Torchbearer Award demonstrates as much.
The Torchbearer Awards have been around since 2004. They were created by the Indiana Commission for Women to honor Hoosier women, particularly those who have demonstrated “courage, perseverance and compassion.”
The honor is supposed to be nonpartisan and non-ideological, which is why women from both political parties—many of whom served as elected officials and took part in some of our state’s most savage and polarizing disputes over the past quarter-century—have received it.
The award is supposed to be a place where we can honor Hoosier women who display qualities we admire, even if they harness those qualities in the service of causes with which we disagree.
It is a way for grownups to act like grownups and acknowledge that even adversaries in a dispute demonstrate character.
Bernard has found herself at the center of a firestorm, one not of her making.
After the Dobbs decision that overturned a half-century of U.S. Supreme Court precedents and stripped American women of their reproductive rights, a 10-year-old girl in Ohio needed an abortion. She had been raped. Her home state had rushed to push through a draconian law prohibiting abortions, so she and her parents came to Indiana and Bernard for help.
Bernard provided that help, performing an abortion.
Before doing so, she did an interview with a reporter from The Indianapolis Star. In the interview, Bernard mentioned only the patient’s age, home state and the medical procedure itself.
All such information is generally available in medical journals.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita—whose lust for rightwing media attention is insatiable—rushed onto Fox News to accuse Bernard of actions so outrageous that even Fox backed away from them almost immediately.
The fact that much of what he said about Bernard was false did not deter Rokita at all. He vowed to punish her.
Litigation ensued—litigation Rokita was likely to lose.
So, he shifted the fight to the Indiana Medical Licensing Board, which is packed with political appointees, including a couple who had made generous financial contributions to the attorney general’s campaigns.
The outcome was foreordained. The board voted to reprimand Bernard and fine her $3,000 but not otherwise curtail her right to practice medicine.
The board’s decision has been roundly criticized and condemned by medical and legal experts around the country.
On top of this state-sanctioned and taxpayer-funded persecution by an attorney general who is supposed to respect and protect the rights of all Hoosiers, including Bernard, the doctor and her family have experienced death threats and other harassment because Rokita chose to place a bullseye on her back.
Yet, through it all, she has conducted herself with dignity and impeccable decorum.
Perhaps that is why the judges for the Torchbearer Award—all of them past Torchbearer recipients—voted unanimously to honor Bernard.
From there, it should have been a routine matter, as it always had been before. The list of honorees would go to the Indiana Council of Women for a ratifying vote and that would be that.
But not this time.
The Indianapolis Star reported that someone—no one is saying who—stripped Bernard’s name off the list before it got to the council.
Gov. Eric Holcomb defended the decision to deny the doctor the distinction to The Indiana Capital Chronicle without acknowledging his office or anyone else had any part in it.
I like Eric Holcomb. Overall, I think he has been a good governor, one who often has tried to find common ground in increasingly fractious times.
That is what makes this so disappointing.
He is the governor. If he doesn’t know how the decision was made to strip Bernard of an honor she deserves—to add another indignity to the long list of abuses this state has visited upon a good woman—then he should find out.
And, if he does know, he should say so.
Playing dumb not only isn’t worthy of the leader of a state. It isn’t worthy of any responsible adult.
In fact, this whole episode displays the kind of vindictive pettiness in which only an undisciplined toddler—or, apparently, an Indiana attorney general—would engage.
Eric Holcomb should be better than this.
Indiana should be better than this.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
