Abortion and Privacy
Justice Department’s Subpoenas Include Planned Parenthood Records
By Jake Tapper
Read on. Should the federal government be doing this? Could this be a way for them to scare people into going through with the procedure?Feb. 26 — Attorney General John Ashcroft is demanding records of abortions performed on hundreds of women at six Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country, ABCNEWS has learned.
In a motion for discovery filed Wednesday against Planned Parenthood Federation of America — and subpoenas filed the same time against Planned Parenthood affiliates in San Diego, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., western Pennsylvania and the Kansas/mid-Missouri region — Ashcroft is demanding medical records of abortions performed in the last year, some on fetuses aborted early in in the second trimester.
"Ashcroft's actions are a sweeping invasion into medical privacy," Elizabeth Toledo, vice president of communications for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told ABCNEWS. "He has been overzealous in his desire to attack access to legal abortions in this country."
The Justice Department has quite a different take. Last fall, after President Bush signed into law the ban on the procedure its opponents call "partial-birth" abortion, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, saying the ban is unconstitutional because the procedure can be medically necessary. In its filing, the Justice Department said it needs the abortion records to determine whether Planned Parenthood is right in making that argument.
Abortion rights opponents agree. "They're only interested in the medical facts and the proof that that procedure was, as these doctors allege, medically necessary," Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Pa., an Ashcroft ally and abortion rights foe, told ABCNEWS.
Two weeks ago, the Justice Department subpoenaed medical records from five university hospitals, stemming from a similar lawsuit against the Justice Department filed by a group of doctors. "If the central issue in the case, an issue raised by those who brought the case, is medical necessity, we need to look at medical records to find out if indeed there was medical necessity," the attorney general said on Feb. 12.
Will Patients Be Scared Away?
Asked about patients' privacy rights, Ashcroft insisted the Justice Department was taking "every precaution possible" to "mask identifying characteristics of patients and to expunge, if you would, the identifying names and addresses, those kinds of things."
But Planned Parenthood officials say that patients' identities can be ascertained from medical records even if names and addresses are expunged. Less than 10 percent of the procedures the organization and its affiliates perform are abortion-related, they say, and they fear the subpoenas will scare away their patients.
"The women who come to Planned Parenthood are now going to be afraid that their medical records and procedures are not going to be private," said Jatrice Martel Gaiter, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., one of the subpoenaed affiliates. "They are going to stop coming. They are going to stop getting reproductive health services that include breast exams, Pap smears and HIV testing and counseling."
Ashcroft has asked that the medical records be turned over to the government on March 5; Planned Parenthood plans a legal challenge.
