Federal health leaders visit Arizona to promote new rule on abortion privacy

A new federal rule will protect the records of patients who seek legal abortions in other states from criminal investigators, two leading U.S. health officials said Tuesday during a visit to Phoenix.

Melanie Fontes Rainer, an Arizona native who is director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, visited Phoenix to promote the new rule along with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

The visit by Becerra and Fontes Rainer to Planned Parenthood Arizona's central Phoenix location came in the midst of chaos, anger and fear over a looming near-total abortion ban in Arizona that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Republicans in the state House of Representatives last week blocked an effort to repeal the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in 2022 means that patients, providers and medical organizations are now worried and, in some cases, hesitant about their ability to access care and to speak about reproductive health, including abortions, Fontes Rainer said.

"They are worried about state agencies, law enforcement and others using their medical records for non-health care purposes," she said. "No one should live in fear that their conversations with their doctors or that their medical claims data will be used to track or target them for seeking lawful reproductive health care."

Some GOP leaders want patients' reproductive health information

The rule, announced this week by the Biden administration, enhances the Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule by prohibiting the disclosure of protected health information related to lawful reproductive health care.

Among other things, the rule requires regulated health care providers to obtain a signed attestation that requests for protected health care information related to reproductive health care are not for the prohibited purposes of investigating or imposing liability on anyone giving, receiving or facilitating legal reproductive health care.

Fontes Rainer, who has been visiting states such as Arizona with restrictive abortion bans, said raising awareness of the rule is also a chance to educate the public about their right to medical privacy.

"Privacy is not a partisan issue," Fontes Rainer told The Arizona Republic in an interview. "The fact that we are in a place where we have to do a rule like this because people are tracking the kind of health care you get, even when you leave your state to go somewhere else, I think should be shocking to people across the country."

Some GOP leaders have insisted they need access to patients’ reproductive health care information to ensure that their states’ abortion restrictions are effective, and conservatives have characterized the new rule as overreach, the Washington Post reported Monday.

Federal health officials said they issued the rule after hearing from communities that changes were needed to protect patient confidentiality and to ensure that the medical records of people seeking legal reproductive health care are not weaponized against them.

Pregnant people have lost rights, but not the right to privacy, official says

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling, women have been denied care they need, young girls who were raped have had to leave their own states to get the care they need and families trying to have babies through IVF "were stopped in their tracks," all because the rights that women had since 1973 were gone, Becerra said.

Though women lost access to care, they did not lose their right to privacy, he said.

"No one has the right to share your personal, private, confidential, very important medical information without permission through law," he said. "This rule will protect your lawful, reproductive health care from disclosure of information."

The rule requires providers to update their own privacy practices so that it's clear in their notices to patients that privacy is protected in reproductive health care.

The final rule demonstrates "a commitment to defend patients' access to reproductive health care" and "protects people's private health information from being used against them when they seek legal reproductive health care," said Angela Florez, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona.

"If a person receives reproductive health care, such as care for an ectopic pregnancy, that information about that care cannot be disclosed or used by their health care provider or health plan for an investigation, or to impose liability on them or their provider," Fontes Rainer said. "We want to make sure folks understand that they continue to have rights here."

Anyone who believes their health privacy rules have been violated can file a complaint with the HHS Office for Civil Rights at https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/filing-a-complaint/index.html.

The 1864 near-total ban in Arizona, which the state Supreme Court upheld on April 9, prohibits abortions in all circumstances, including rape and incest, with the only exception being to save the life of the pregnant patient. The Arizona Supreme Court stayed enforcement of the 160-year-old abortion ban for 14 days and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has said the law won't take effect until at least June 8.

What's in the Howell Code? What you need to know about the history of Arizona's abortion ban

Reach health care reporter Stephanie Innes at Stephanie.Innes@gannett.com or follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @stephanieinnes.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra promotes rule on abortion records