In a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Senator J.D. Vance and a number of other conservative lawmakers expressed “concerns” over a new Biden administration policy that blocks police from obtaining women’s reproductive healthcare records.
Vance and his colleagues hoped to block the new policy and allow law enforcement to monitor women’s pregnancies. Donald Trump himself comes out in support of abortion surveillance programs in 2024.
From their missive, printed on congressional letterhead:
“Abortion is not health care—it is a brutal act that destroys the life of an unborn child and hurts women. Congress did not authorize HHS to extend special provisions for abortion such as these under the guise of ‘health care.’ The Proposed Rule unlawfully thwarts the enforcement of compassionate laws protecting unborn children and their mothers, and directs health care providers to defy lawful court orders and search warrants.”
In the aftermath of SCOTUS’ Dobbs decision ending Roe v. Wade and federal protections for abortion access, Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden Administration issued a new, expanded rule under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that blocks police from obtaining reproductive records—even in a criminal case. Per Lever News:
“While these privacy laws do not usually apply in the case of a criminal investigation, the proposed rule prohibited health officials from divulging records related to reproductive health care — including for fertility issues, contraception, and miscarriages — even if requested by law enforcement.“
Adding to the rule’s urgency is how women and their partners seeking abortions are most often “reported to law enforcement by healthcare workers,” according to Lever. In fact, the abortion-access attorney nonprofit If When How reports that, between 2000-2020, self-managed pregnancy terminations were prosecuted 61 times in 26 states—the majority of those criminal cases occurring in Texas.
The data suggests that, despite SCOTUS’ overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022, abortion has been under attack by Republicans for many decades prior.
The assault on reproductive care follows a similar line of attack on transgender Americans’ privacy and freedoms. In April of 2024, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was granted limited access to health records, as ordered by Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer, a Jay Nixon appointee in 2012. (Bailey tried to implement a sweeping ban on gender-affirming care in 2023 but was blocked by a different circuit judge.)
Planned Parenthood finds itself at the center of both abortion and transgender cases across the nation, including the case in Missouri. As Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling writes in The New Republic:
“Planned Parenthood derided the decision for allowing Bailey to pursue his ‘sham investigation,’ arguing in a statement that, like abortion access, transgender health care is being ‘systematically dismantled—little by little, starting with the most vulnerable, including young people.'”
Like being able to make decisions about family planning and reproduction, research shows gender-affirming healthcare produces good outcomes. Houghtaling writes, “In reality, providing trans and nonbinary children with gender-affirming care actually makes them safer. Gender-affirming care decreases the amount of depression and anxiety that trans and nonbinary teenagers feel, and it makes them less likely to consider suicide.”
As Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic instructor Alejandra Caraballo told New Republic, conservative AGs and lawmakers are trying to establish fake precedent to gain access to sensitive records: “I absolutely believe DOJ needs to get involved here along with HHS as well as the HIPAA office, and say, look, this is not a valid investigation. This is clearly pretextual. And you’re targeting an entire group of people.”
As with banning pornography and other “culture war” topics fomented by the Republican party, restricting and criminalizing abortion (along with denying existence of transgender Americans) is one of Project 2025‘s most-discussed topics.
SOURCES
- Lever News
- TIME – Trump supports abortion surveillance
- The New Republic
- Letter sent to HHS from 29 GOP lawmakers, including Vance
- IfWhenHow.org
- IfWhenHow abortion-prosecution graphic
- HHS privacy rule change
- Washington Post
- Rachel Maddow
