Doctors and Nurses Shouldn't Be Able to Report Your Pregnancy Loss to the Police
If a pregnant woman shows up to an emergency room bleeding heavily, a healthcare provider or social worker might report her to the cops if they suspect she self-managed her abortion. This is legal, though a growing group of advocates stress it’s unethical.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the risk of pregnancy criminalization has spiked. People may think the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) would protect their private medical information, but the law’s privacy rule has a loophole that allows healthcare workers to share information with law enforcement when they believe a crime has been committed, or when they receive a warrant or subpoena. (Caitlin Bernard, the Indiana OB/GYN who cared for a 10-year-old rape survivor, is suing to stop the state Attorney General’s subpoena seeking the girl’s medical records.)
Now, advocates and lawmakers are calling for the Biden administration to fix HIPAA’s privacy loophole. Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) introduced a bill Thursday that would strengthen HIPAA to ban medical providers from disclosing information on abortion or pregnancy loss without patients’ consent in a court proceeding. It’s called the Secure Access for Essential Reproductive (SAFER) Health Act, and it would also require the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a national education campaign for healthcare workers. The bill stops short of banning providers from sharing this information with law enforcement and instead focuses on hampering prosecutions.
The loophole is not a hypothetical risk, as healthcare workers already reported their patients to law enforcement while Roe was still on the books. The non-profit Pregnancy Justice notes that there were more than 1,300 arrests for suspicion of drug use or self-managed abortion or pregnancy loss between 2006 to 2020 alone. An August 2022 report from If/When/How found that, in 61 cases where adults were investigated for pregnancy outcomes, 45 percent were reported to law enforcement by care professionals, including doctors, nurses, and social workers.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/doctors-nurses-shouldnt-able-report-181500361.html
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