An Indiana doctor has sued the state over its abortion reporting requirements, saying that they conflict with new federal privacy regulations.
Dr. Christina Scifres, an OB/GYN at Indiana University Health, filed a lawsuit against the Indiana Department of Health and the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, claiming that the law requiring abortionists to report information to the state violates federal health privacy requirements.
Though most preborn children are protected from abortion in the state of Indiana, the state’s law requires the reporting of the abortions that are committed. Abortion reporting commonly tracks information such as gestational age, age of the mother, and abortion method, but it does not report anything that would be used to identify the mother.
Scrifres filed her lawsuit on December 23, the same day that a new federal Reproductive Health Care Privacy Rule went into effect. According to Indianapolis Business Journal, the rule “prohibits disclosure of individuals’ protected health information when it could be used to investigate, impose liability on, or identify anyone seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating reproductive health care.” Scifres contends that the state’s abortion reporting requirements conflict with the new federal statute, and that it would be impossible for abortionists to comply with both.
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Abortion reporting is important because, in many cases, it helps demonstrate why women are seeking abortion. It also serves as a method of oversight to ensure that laws are being followed, such as noting that chemical abortions are not being committed past the gestational limit, that minor abortions are being reported per state law, and that abortions are only occurring at licensed facilities.
The Indiana abortion reporting methods came under fire in April 2024, after the Department of Health announced it would be making changes to the way the reports were released because some said it would be easy to infer the identity of the abortive mothers from the report. Attorney General Todd Rokita defended the reports, calling them a matter of public record.
“Although the term ‘medical record’ is not defined, its ordinary meaning and context indicate that the term refers to confidential patient records maintained by providers for diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. [Terminated Pregnancy Reports] TPRs do not fall into that category. TPRs are reports submitted to a public agency for purposes of evaluating compliance with state statutes governing abortion,” Rokita said at the time.
“The Department of Health … can still redact certain bits of information here that anyone finds could lead to the identification of pregnant women although I don’t think that’s at all likely,” he added. “Partial redactions are legal and it is an option to solve whatever conceived problem the Department of Health thinks it has.”
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Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!
