Ashcroft Seeks Hospital Abortion Records

The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia, Ann Arbor and other cities turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.
Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what anti-abortion groups call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, which was passed last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions.

Justice Department lawyers say they want to examine the medical histories of dozens of patients from the last three years to determine if certain abortions were medically necessary.

Hospital administrators say the demands violate the privacy rights of their patients. This has resulted in divided interpretations from federal judges in recent days about whether the Justice Department has a right to see the files.

A federal judge in New York last week allowed the subpoenas to go forward and threatened to impose penalties, and perhaps even lift a temporary ban he had imposed on the government's new abortion restrictions, if the records were not turned over. He said, "I will not let the doctors hide behind the shield of the hospital."

But, also last week, the chief federal judge in Chicago threw out the subpoena against the Northwestern University Medical Center because he said it was a "significant intrusion" on the patients' privacy.

The judge said a woman's relationship with her doctor and her decision on whether to get an abortion are "issues indisputably of the most sensitive stripe," and they should remain confidential "without the fear of public disclosure.

Audio:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/13/1545209