A federal district court on Sunday granted a Texas doctor an injunction against the Biden-Harris administration regulations that restrict the disclosing of information about a patient’s abortion to authorities. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that the Biden administration is likely to have exceeded its authority by issuing the rule, which it claimed would strengthen privacy protections for women seeking abortions. The decision came just one day before the doctor was required to abide by the rule in question.
Following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, the Biden-Harris administration aimed to use federal agency power to “support access to the full spectrum of reproductive care, including abortion.”
According to the court’s opinion, the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) “2024 Rule invokes the ‘privacy’ protections of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (‘HIPAA’) to restrict disclosure of information” regarding “‘abortion’ and ‘gender identity,’ though the subject-matter is cloaked in the catchall term ‘reproductive health care.'”
In October, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of Carmen Purl, M.D., challenging the changes. Dr. Purl argued that the rule could prohibit her from reporting the suspected abuse of a patient who may have been pressured into getting an abortion. ADF called the rule change an “attempt to politicize HIPAA regulations.”
“Requiring a doctor … to navigate [the] requirements and make perplexing legal judgments necessarily ‘limits’ reporting ‘child abuse’ as Texas law mandates,” the court wrote in its opinion. “For professionals like Dr. Purl, Texas law requires a suspected report to be made within 48 hours of her suspicion.”
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In a press release, ADF explained, “Without authority from the HIPAA statute, the new rule redefined ‘person’ and ‘public health’ to exclude unborn children, and it limited how doctors and law enforcement protect patients from abuse when it involves abortion.” The new rule redefined “person” to exclude preborn children and limited how doctors and police can protect women and girls from abortion-related abuse.
Dr. Purl is a family physician and owner of Dr. Purl’s Fast Care Walk In Clinic in Texas. The case, Purl v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, centers on Purl’s efforts to protect her patients by being able to report suspected abuse and safeguard the health and safety of mothers and children.
“Doctors and states should be able to protect patients from abuse,” said ADF Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake. “The court rightly ruled that this unlawful rule change would have weaponized laws about privacy that have nothing to do with abortion or gender identity. The Biden administration attempted to undermine state laws that protect mothers and unborn children from the harms of abortion, and vulnerable children from dangerous and sterilizing procedures like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and life-altering surgeries. This ruling falls in line with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs that affirms that states—not unelected bureaucrats—should set abortion policy and be free to protect unborn life.”
Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:
Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!
