The Villainization of Dr. Caitlin Bernard

The medical boards and political action, inaction in divided America

Last year Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indiana OB/GYN physician, provided an abortion to a 10 year-old victim of rape. This young girl had travelled from deep-red Ohio just after the fall of Roe v. Wade when trigger laws prevented her from accessing care in her home state. In retaliation for speaking out about the injustice of her patient’s situation, Dr. Bernard faced potentially losing her medical license. On Thursday, she was fined $3,000 by her state medical board.

The board’s argument for the disciplinary action against Bernard was that she “violated her young patient’s privacy by discussing the case with a reporter” though she did not share any patient identifying information. In fact, the sharing of patient identifying information is part of the accusations against extremist anti-vax ENT physician Dr. Mary Talley Bowden in her new complaint filed with her Texas Medical Board. Despite having spread deadly political public health lies, grifting off ivermectin, breaking HIPAA, and wishing death upon the children of healthcare workers who spoke up against her, she was offered a $5,000 fine as part of a deal with the TMB that allowed her to keep her medical license - which she turned down. As her latest complaint shows, she finally faces losing her medical license.

That the Indiana medical board acted more swiftly on this abortion case than the nation’s constellation of state medical boards has acted on Covid disinformation, another hot button political issue, is telling. Bowden has acted in line with the GOP’s wishes; Bernard has not. And by GOP we mean the Council for National Policy that controls the Republican politics with its dark money and media machine. To properly compare the cases of Bernard and Bowden, we must go back to the shared roots of the modern anti-abortion and anti-vax political movements which have emerged from the Trump presidency, something the CNP ushered in.

CNP member and Federalist Society legal activist Leonard Leo architected the GOP takeover of the Supreme Court under Trump that paved the way for the fall of Roe. Like his colleague Clarence Thomas, with whom he is featured in the now infamous painting at Harlan Crow’s Adirondacks retreat, Leo has suffered bad press for his greed and impressively lavish lifestyle thanks to his involvement in far-right politics.

Leo has additionally suffered more bad press for his part in a deal to send money secretively to Clarence Thomas’s wife that involved former CNP member and Senior Counselor to Trump Kellyanne Conway. Ginni Thomas is not only a CNP member but was on the CNP Action Committee when they created the pro-hydroxychloroquine organization America’s Frontline Doctors to downplay Covid for Trump’s failed re-election bid.

Like insurrectionist AFLDS front woman Dr. Simone Gold, Ginni Thomas has been extremely involved in pushing Trump’s election Big Lie. She leveraged her position as a SCOTUS wife to pressure lawmakers in key swing states to overturn the 2020 result in favor of Trump. As a thanks for her service to the cause, Gold was granted membership to the CNP. She’s also gotten support from Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Mary Talley Bowden’s right wing physician organization the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) in her bid to avoid consequences for her January 6th involvement.

Gold, who relocated from California to Florida and received a new state license, has also gotten support in her battle against the California Medical Board in the form of a Koch money-tied lawsuit against the state’s new Covid physician accountability law AB2098 (While Charles Koch is not a CNP member, he is a key ally of theirs). Gold finally faces action from the CMB over her J6 involvement, not her central role in a deadly conspiracy, or her organization’s stalking and ambushing of the President of the CMB.

Both Gold and Bowden’s credentials, white womanhood, and willingness to brazenly lie have been used by the modern GOP anti-vax movement to market their messaging which has been deadly. The far-right has exalted genuinely monstrous women and protected them from the consequences of their many unconscionable actions. But this movement has absolutely no qualms throwing a caring, credentialed female physician like Dr. Caitlin Bernard under the bus if need be. We know this from what the anti-vaxxers did to Florida ICU physician Dr. Natalia Solenkva, another woman in medicine made to be a martyr for speaking out on how politics affected her practice of medicine.

The CNP is no friend to women of any race, identity, or profession. It has been organizing for decades to take away women’s reproductive rights. Now that they’ve succeeded in doing that federally, GOP politicians aren’t even reliably consistent on what abortion bans should look like. But, as they have ushered in fascist extremism, we see far-right states like Idaho chasing doctors out with their extreme policy. Idaho abortion physician Dr. Lauren Miller recently spoke out in a truly heartbreaking interview about moving her practice out of state in a devastating sign of the times.

Idaho is of course home to Gold’s AFLDS colleague Dr. Ryan Cole who, like Gold and the AFLDS itself, is in a whole lot of legal trouble. Despite his extreme rhetoric like calling vaccination “needle rape”, his promotion of unproven treatments for Covid and tele-health grift, and a malpractice lawsuit in the state, Cole still holds his position on the Central District Health board in Boise. His appointment itself was political.

In the blue state of Washington, where Cole also has a medical license, he is actually facing accountability. Our article about the letter sent to him by the Washington Medical Commission is the most read on this site because the contents of the letter are incredibly damning. He has openly posted incredibly misogynistic things about women who swore the same Hippocratic Oath he once did and speak out against his misuse of the credentials and positions he holds, at least for now. And yet, Cole is still touring around the country and the world with politically-aligned disinformation doctors.

Cole, Gold, and Bowden are the exact sort of dangerous doctors the movement needed. It’s no surprise both Gold and Bowden have also engaged in extreme rhetoric for the anti-abortion arm of their political ideology. They are not women for women, just women out for themselves willing to do anything for their cause. They’re the Ginni Thomases of medicine.

In today’s political climate The Radicalization of Simone Gold is paired with the Villainization of Caitlin Bernard, an innocent woman who did not choose to be involved in politics. This is what happens when self-serving leaders rise for the sake of chaos at the expense of others. Gold has shown her and the CNP’s true colors and they are painfully ugly. The inaction by the boards in dealing with doctors like her and the action against Bernard here have shown some colors, too.

With the recent addition of more physicians to the Council for National Policy, it’s clear there are some who swore to do no harm willing to protect their political status quo by sacrificing those who still uphold their oaths to protect. All for what, to keep healthcare private and in the good graces of those that refuses to let go of outdated belief or power? Where is the protection for the protectors in all of this? How much more Gilead is it going to get before it’s finally enough to clean house - in government, medicine, and their unholy overlap in the GOP?

Now that innocent women in medicine are made the villains can we finally all admit this political movement is not for women? At least not women who support women. And innocent little girls.