CV NEWS FEED // CatholicVote has filed comments opposing the Biden administration’s proposed amendments to the HIPAA privacy rule.
CatholicVote’s statement contends: “The proposed rule disregards the sanctity of human life; harms children and adults who are victims of abuse; and imposes unnecessary and inappropriate costs on health care providers.”
>> Read CatholicVote’s full comment HERE <<
The goal of the rule, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website would be to “strengthen privacy protections” by prohibiting investigators from using “PHI” (protected health information) “against any person in connection with seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating reproductive health care.”
HHS argues that the rule changes are necessary to address “confusion” about privacy following the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade.
CatholicVote joined numerous other advocacy groups in objecting to the change, saying it “seeks to disrupt well-established federal privacy law standards, interfere with the proper exercise of state’s public health powers, and undermine the final authority of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.”
>> Read CatholicVote’s full comment HERE <<
While the rule seeks to protect seekers of legal abortion, it simultaneously tries “to use HIPAA to impede certain forms of abortion regulation, usurping an authority that the Supreme Court locates in ‘the people and their elected representatives.’”
Under the proposed rule, investigators and other legal authorities would not determine whether reproductive health care was lawfully provided. Instead, the burden would fall on health care providers. As Roger Severino, Vice President of Heritage Foundation, points out in his own comment:
Dobbs restored the ability of legislatures at all levels to protect human beings in the womb from destruction. HIPAA simply cannot be drafted to get in their way without doing violence to federalism and the rule of law.
In its objection, Alliance Defending Freedom pointed out that the new rule extends well beyond contraception and abortion:
The proposed rule defines “reproductive health care” too broadly and improperly restricts public health information about sterilizing interventions sought by persons identifying as members of the opposite sex, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital surgeries.
>> Read CatholicVote’s full comment HERE <<
