Government intrusion

Would you accept case records with all patient names removed? I would, and it does sound necessary for the lawsuit.

The records should have no names and no way for the government to retrieve them.
IMO rather than being given the actual records the Government should be asking for and receiving the data they need statistically.

Privacy in Peril

In an attempt to bolster its defense of the unconstitutional Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003, the Bush administration has gone beyond its campaign to destroy women's reproductive rights and has attacked the privacy rights of all Americans.
This assault is being conducted through subpoenas the Justice Department has issued demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia, Illinois and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient records for certain abortions. This egregious intrusion on patients' privacy is being pursued in the name of defending lawsuits against the abortion ban. Not only is the information not needed to do that, but it is also a flagrant example of why Congress and the attorney general have no business second-guessing sensitive medical decisions made by individuals and their doctors.
Judges in New York and Nebraska have barred the administration from enforcing the abortion law in response to suits brought by groups of doctors, who have argued, correctly, that the ban should be struck down because of imprecise wording and the lack of an exception to protect a woman's health. A narrow Supreme Court majority struck down a state ban in 2000 for omitting a health exception.
Attorney General John Ashcroft says the fishing expedition his department has started is justified to evaluate whether the procedures covered by the law are ever necessary to preserve a woman's health. In a sound ruling last week, a federal judge in Illinois rebuffed this flimsy argument. Citing state and federal law, as well as Supreme Court precedent, the judge, Charles Kocoras, also rejected the Ashcroft team's astonishing claim that no doctor-patient privilege exists under federal law protecting patients from public disclosure of their records.
Unfortunately, the federal judge in New York overseeing one of the legal challenges to the new law does not grasp his duty to protect patient privacy. That judge, Richard Conway Casey of New York's Southern District, has threatened to lift his injunction blocking enforcement of the abortion ban if leading hospitals in New York City and elsewhere fail to produce files on at least several dozen women's abortions.
Underscoring the legally dubious nature of Judge Casey's threat, the hospitals in question are not themselves parties to the lawsuit. Nor, for that matter, are the women whose personal privacy Mr. Ashcroft is so determined to invade. Moreover, as Judge Kocoras aptly noted, redacting a patient's name and identification number from her file neither ends the harm to individuals of having intimate details of their medical history publicly disclosed, nor adequately protects the patients' identities.
We applaud those hospitals that are resisting Mr. Ashcroft's privacy invasion, and encourage them to stand firm until the legal proceedings run their course. Meanwhile, Americans should see Mr. Ashcroft's intimidating tactics for the dangerous threat to liberty and privacy they really are.

as long as I can remember, the conservative element of american politics as been agast at the intrusion of the government into what is regarded as privacy issues especially by the left wing body politic. One of the very few elements of personal privacy (todate) has been our personal/private medical records/history, apparantly now the right wing (Ashcroft etal) have decided that the governments need to know supercedes even this last bastion of privacy. DAMN

Last night Bill Maher made the same points.

Paraphrasing: why is it that the political party that wants to get government out of your lives feels compelled to legislate love?

In the rush to privatize schools, prisons, charities and nearly everything else it can see, how about privatizing privacy?

Everyone knows how I feel about the Rethuglicans, so it should come as no surprise that their insinuation into our society's mores leaves more than just a bad taste in my mouth.

Where's the beef?

The "beef" comes in because (like it or not) there is legislation out there and one side says that the procedure covered in the legislation isn't necessary and the other side says it is.

The side that keeps saying it is necessary and keeps talking about cases where the life of the woman is in danger but doesn't want to have to actually provide any sort of proof that anyone's life has ever actually been in any such danger and they know that if the stastical data were actually released their argument will come crumbling down like a house of cards.

I try never to have an opinion on the abortion topic since I'm never going to have to have one. My question was in reference to the title of the topic. If the government learns that I jerk off 10 times a day, but doesn't know it's me, should I be embarrassed? I just don't see anything intrusive about wanting to read nameless, faceless documents.

I agree, as long as the documents REMAIN nameless and faceless.

Hmmm...........Ten times a day. Have you considered therapy! :wink:

I know Bill. The issue isn't one of privacy and they know it. They're hiding under the banner of privacy because it's all they've got to cling to.

FishinFishin
Who is they? Dr.s, hospitals? Why should "they"?

The "they" is the collection of people that continue to fight against any attempt to collect any sort of statstical data on the issue.

Statistical data is not what they are asking for actual records are.

My previous response on this thread.

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.

Yes, in this case they are asking for the records without the names.

Do the hospitals have the statstical data? Do the doctors involved? They've all admitted that they don't in the past so how do you propose the stastical data be collected without the raw data to start with? Should the burden of assembling the stastical data to prove this case be levied on the hospitals/doctors? How can any stastical data be trusted if there is no access to the raw data and methodology? Or are we just supposed to accept the stats that one side in the debate creates with the raw data hidden?

Why should data be distorted by the hospitals? What do they have to gain by doing so? Yes, hospitals not some government bureaucrat should analyze the data and present it.

Why should people demand Cheney release raw data (documents) of meetings he had when developing Energy Policy? Why should people demand Bush release his raw data (records) of his military service?

Shouldn't people just accept what they and their staff says happened? It's the same argument.

Again, sidestepping the moral/legal debate about the procedure itself: If doctors are claiming the procedure is necessary to save lives… and their records can substantiate this without compromising anyone but the doctor's confidentiality; why wouldn't they want to? I think it is reasonable, even prudent to expect such a claim on such a controversial, important topic be very closely scrutinized. What, other than the judgment of these doctors, is there to hide? Perhaps it could be argued that the Doctors themselves have the same right as the victims to shield their identities (so as not to be demonized for what was a legal procedure), but there is still no excuse to ask the powers that be to make such an important decision without all of the available facts. Considering that both sides have legitimate arguments; I think it is of paramount importance that all of the available facts be considered.

Fishin
Not quite. Cheney has something to hide. What do the hospitals have to hide?