- On Friday, April 5, the Center for Reproductive Rights will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to find unconstitutional a 1996 South Carolina regulation that violates medical privacy and imposes burdensome licensing requirements on abortion providers. A major issue before the court is whether the state will be permitted to obtain medical records of any patients without seeking their consent.
"If the state of South Carolina has its way, women will be subject to having their most personal medical information released without their consent to the government," said Bonnie Scott Jones, a staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights and lead counsel. "All citizens in South Carolina, including women seeking abortions, are entitled to privacy when it comes to medical records," added Jones.
In September 2001, a federal judge found the South Carolina law violated informational privacy rights, but the state attorney general appealed that claim to the Fourth Circuit. The Center for Reproductive Rights has asked the appeals court to consider its claims that the law is unconstitutionally vague, violates the establishment clause of the Constitution, and improperly delegates licensing authority.
For example, the Center for Reproductive Rights will argue that the regulation unconstitutionally empowers local hospitals to determine whether a physician can obtain a license to perform abortions by requiring that the physician have an arrangement with a physician with admitting privileges. The establishment clause claim seeks to invalidate a requirement that physicians maintain professional affiliations with clergy persons who would provide their patients with counseling. This provision applies regardless of the physician’s or the patient’s beliefs, and is nothing less than the government forcing religion into private doctors’ offices and clinics.
First challenged in 1996, the law took effect for the first time in September 2001. South Carolina’s law, known as a Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider (TRAP) law, is intended to make abortion prohibitively expensive and increasingly difficult to obtain.
Bonnie Scott Jones and Janet Crepps of the Center for Reproductive Rights and local cooperating attorney Randall Hiller represent the plaintiffs in Greenville Women’s Clinic v. Bryant, including Greenville Women’s Clinic and William Lynn, M.D.
