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An Illinois abortionist accused of botching a late-term abortion is now urging a court to publicly expose the identity of the woman suing him, while simultaneously seeking a gag order to silence her from speaking out publicly.
The woman, a 32-year-old mother of four, says she underwent a late-term surgical abortion at Equity Clinic in Champaign that left nearly the entire body of her unborn child — reportedly everything except parts of the limbs — inside her womb. She later required emergency surgery and is suing for medical malpractice and emotional trauma, CatholicVote reported.
Dr. Keith Reisinger-Kindle, who owns Equity Clinic and performed the abortion, filed a motion this week opposing the woman’s request for anonymity. At the same time, he asked the court to bar her and her legal team from publicly discussing the case.
The patient’s attorney, Richard M. Craig, criticized the motions as an unfair and dangerous tactic.
“She never asked to be put in this position,” Craig told CatholicVote in a July 1 interview. “Nobody asks to need an emergency laparotomy because the first doctor botched what he was hired to do.”
“My client now faces a Hobson’s choice: either proceeding against the person who put me in this position and announcing to the world who I am, or letting him get away with it,” he added. “I don’t think that a person should be put in that position.”
In court documents, Reisinger-Kindle’s legal team argued that the woman cannot publicly litigate the case by name against their client while remaining anonymous herself.
According to Craig, however, the comparison doesn’t hold.
“There’s a clear difference,” Craig said. “He publicly identifies himself as someone who does this for a living — it’s apples and oranges.”
While the original motion does not cite safety concerns, Craig said those risks are real and he plans to outline them in a forthcoming filing.
“In this day and age, there’s also a safety component,” he said. “There are too many people who will take matters into their own hands and deliver what they believe is justice.”
Craig also questioned Reisinger-Kindle’s motive, asking, “What does the doctor gain by outing her?”
“I can’t identify anything that he gains by it,” he continued. “I can speculate that he wants to discourage her from proceeding. But other than that, what does he get from opposing the use of a fictitious name?”
Reisinger-Kindle’s team also argues the woman has “already leveraged multiple high-profile media outlets to elevate her narrative,” claiming her anonymity is inappropriate in a case of statewide public interest.
Craig said the request for a gag order, while simultaneously demanding his client be named, is especially troubling.
“It’s very ironic,” Craig said. “In the same legal memoranda where they talk about the public policy of the state of Illinois to identify litigants, they seek a gag order in the face of the very real public policy of the United States of America favoring free speech.”
He added: “One of their claims is that I’m trying to litigate this in the press. But I haven’t reached out to anyone. I’ve simply answered phone calls and responded to questions.”
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation reprimanded and fined Reisinger-Kindle $5,000 in April for the same incident now at the center of the lawsuit.
The court has not yet ruled on either request.
