Hi Rulers, happy Friday. My name is Dana, and I’m a digital producer at POLITICO. We wish Sophie luck in her new role at POLITICO. Her tenure with this newsletter is a tough act to follow! A little bit about me: I’m a Taurus, I like long walks on the beach and I’m excited to be helming Women Rule this week. Let’s get into it: Since Roe v. Wade was overturned almost two years ago, 21 states have banned or restricted abortion. On Wednesday, a six-week abortion ban took effect in Florida, replacing the state’s previous 15-week ban. In Arizona, the state legislature voted this week to repeal its Civil War-era abortion ban. And later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that could roll back access to abortion pills across the country. Last week, the Biden administration finalized rules declaring that health care providers aren’t allowed to inform law enforcement about a patient’s abortion if they received the procedure in a state where it is legal or protected by state or federal law. The new rule updates the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, commonly known as HIPAA, which prevents health care providers and medical insurance agencies from giving out medical information about patients. “[Our office] has had a lot of dialogue with patients and providers about the need for this rule,” Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of HHS’ Office of Civil Rights, tells Women Rule. “When these women have to travel outside of their state as a mechanism to receive the care that they need … those records would be protected. Also, if that woman did go to another state and receive [an abortion], maybe she needs follow-up care." “[Women] won’t be scared to go to their doctor because they know those records will be shielded from the intrusion into their medical privacy.” The final rule, issued through the Health and Human Services Department’s Office for Civil Rights, shields patients’ medical records if they live in a state with an abortion ban and travel to an area where the procedure is legal. Since states started restricting abortion rights, the number of women traveling out-of-state to have the procedure legally has grown exponentially. The Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research group, released data in December that indicated more than 92,000 women crossed state lines to receive an abortion within the first half of 2023 — compared to 40,600 within the first six months of 2020. Some states, such as Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho and Missouri, have tried to limit residents’ ability to do this by making it a crime to assist with travel. Emily Wales is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which provides services in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas. Of these four states, Kansas is the only one where abortion is still legal. (In a 2022 referendum, Kansans blocked efforts to strip abortion protections from the constitution.) Wales said her branch’s three Kansas clinics have been swamped by patients traveling from the other three states in her region — as well as from other states with abortion bans. This year, more than half of their patients in Kansas come from Texas — at least an eight hour drive to see a provider. “We see a majority out-of-state patient population now,” Wales tells Women Rule. “Increasingly, our patient population is Texans. Then Missourians, Kansans, Oklahomans, Arkansans, folks from Louisiana. All of those patients are regularly coming to our health centers in Kansas.” According to Fontes Rainer, the rule also aims to protect physicians who could feel pressured to cooperate with an investigation. “This rule is really meant to reinstill that trust in the [doctor]-patient relationship. But also to make sure that people aren’t scared to go to their doctors because of how their information might be used or disclosed,” she says. “Protected information ought to be protected,” says Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, an organization that advocates for a variety of women’s issues. The relationship between doctors and patients, she says, “is something really important that we think needs to be respected.” Frye says the Biden administration’s rule is a “really important first step” because it “sends the message that it is important to maximize the ability of patients to have a conversation with their providers — and not to be fearful that those conversations will be used against them.” The Biden administration’s work on HIPAA regulations has previously faced criticism. Last year, 19 attorneys general from GOP-controlled states sent a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra after the department updated HIPAA rules. The letter said the administration’s rule was a “solution in search of a problem” and that it “reflects the same distortion of basic legal rules and democratic principles that pervaded abortion matters for decades” before the 2022 Dobbs decision. “The Biden administration’s HIPAA rule would vaunt abortionists into a specifically protected category under HIPAA,” Steven Aden, the chief legal officer and general counsel of the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life, says in a statement. “Doctors now risk jail if they comply with a valid warrant that seeks records related to ‘reproductive health care,’ defined to include abortion,” Alden says. “The regulation treats all abortions, even if done in a pro-life state, as lawful unless law enforcement can prove the abortions they’re investigating were illegal.” According to text from the final rule, if a law enforcement official provides a reproductive health care clinic with a court order for the medical information, the rule would “permit but not require” the clinic to disclose the information. Fontes Rainer says that the rule protects privacy, and “privacy is not a partisan issue.” “We can all disagree on … what you might think about abortion. But at the end of the day, your privacy is your privacy,” she says.
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment