Biden seeks to protect patients’ abortion data from GOP threats

Under previous rules, organizations were allowed to disclose personal health information to law enforcement authorities in certain cases, such as criminal investigations. Department of Health and Human Services officials said they had heard from patients and providers who were confused about their legal risks or even delayed care amid GOP threats in the nearly two dozen states with abortion restrictions.

“People are afraid to confide in their suppliers. In this new climate, people are concerned about how their medical information might be used,” said Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of the civil rights office at HHS, which updated the rules. “The goal here is to restore trust in the medical relationship with the provider. … The goal here is for people not to stay home if they are too afraid to get care.”

Monday’s announcement is the latest effort by the Biden administration aimed at protecting reproductive health care, a central part of President Biden’s re-election bid. However, the increase in criminal charges that many abortion rights advocates and Democrats feared has not occurred since the Supreme Court ruled in the case nearly two years ago Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationwhich fell over Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. The state abortion ban explicitly exempts those who seek abortion from prosecution.

But doctors could face steep fines and prison sentences, and many health care professionals have said they are confused about the current legal landscape governing access to abortion, such as whether a federal emergency room law takes precedence over state abortion bans. as the Biden administration has argued. HHS and reproductive rights advocates have also cited cases like Brittany Watts’ arrest as examples of the need for stronger privacy protections. Watts, a medical receptionist from Ohio, has said she suffered a miscarriage at home last year and told a nurse, who then reported the situation to police.

Some GOP leaders have emphasized that they need access to information about patients’ reproductive health to ensure abortion restrictions in their states are effective. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) said this month that his state’s terminated pregnancy reports, which provide some identifying information about individual abortions, should be released as public records.

Nineteen Republican attorneys general last year blasted the Biden administration’s efforts to overhaul HIPAA as unnecessary and unconstitutional.

Biden officials have “advanced a false narrative that states are attempting to treat pregnant women as criminals or punish medical personnel who provide life-saving care,” the attorneys general wrote in a June 2023 letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “Based on this lie, the government has attempted to wrest control of abortion back from the people, in defiance of the Constitution and Dobbs.”

The White House has countered that federal privacy laws were insufficient for a postalRoo world.

Under the new state abortion restrictions, “it becomes a crime, which means it is very likely that if law enforcement agencies request your personal and private medical information, they may be entitled to it,” Vice President Harris said during a board meeting on Reproductive Health. healthcare last year. “Part of the conversation we’re having today is about what we can do … to strengthen patient privacy protections.”

Fontes Rainer said the effort is personal to her. The HHS civil rights official said she was pregnant with twins last year before she miscarried and needed an abortion.

“It is my absolute duty to share my story and do everything I can to (help) the millions of women across the country who have no voice,” Fontes Rainer said in an interview on Sunday, adding that her office was working “fairly quickly” to revise federal health privacy rules.

“We heard there was a problem going on. … And we wrote this rule so that lawful reproductive health care is possible,” she said.