Today, the Center for Reproductive Rights petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of a South Carolina regulation that allows the state to inspect and copy abortion patients’ medical records, without making safeguards to protect the confidentiality of their private medical information. On behalf of local abortion providers in South Carolina, the Center is charging that the provision violates patients’ right to informational privacy.
"We are asking the Supreme Court to protect the right of South Carolina women to keep private information private," said Bonnie Scott Jones, a staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights and lead counsel for the plaintiffs. "By permitting the South Carolina Department of Health to copy and file patients’ identities and private medical histories, this regulation flies in the face of the right that all of us have to keep our medical histories from public scrutiny," added Jones.
Abortion providers in South Carolina already comply with state and federal laws governing similar health care providers. TRAP (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) laws, like South Carolina’s regulation in this case, impose additional levels of government intrusion and oversight for this politically controversial procedure, thereby segregating abortion from mainstream medicine and restricting women’s access to these services. These excessive and unnecessary government regulations ultimately harm women’s health and inhibit their reproductive choices.
The Center for Reproductive Rights is asking the Supreme Court to consider four aspects of South Carolina’s abortion regulation. These include: whether a state may review, copy and retain abortion patients’ complete medical records without protecting those records from public disclosure, and without demonstrating a countervailing public interest for the privacy intrusion; whether a state may require abortion providers to form professional affiliations with clergy persons, including at least one Protestant; whether a state may make abortion facility licensing contingent upon the cooperation of area hospitals that are free to deny their cooperation because of opposition to abortion; and whether a state may require abortion providers to comply with regulatory requirements that have no fixed meaning and will be defined by inspectors on a case by case basis.
The Supreme Court petition follows a number of court battles over this law. In September, the Court of Appeals reversed a lower court holding that permitting state health inspectors to review, remove and copy patient medical records containing identifying information violates patients' right to informational privacy. In December, the Fourth Circuit reversed its initial decision to rehear the Center’s challenge before the court’s full panel of judges; later that month, however, it agreed to stay the law while the Supreme Court decides whether to take the case.
Bonnie Scott Jones 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.
