And we needn’t imagine that Mr. Ashcroft was deeply concerned about protecting the public’s privacy. After all, a few months ago he took the unprecedented step of subpoenaing the hospital records of women who have had late-term abortions.
Otherwise, Krugman had valid points- and why wasn’t the Noonday plot bigger news. But then he goes and shits the bed with this out and out lie.
Oliver
WTF are you talking about?
Ashcroft defends abortion subpoenas
“Under fire from abortion-rights groups, Attorney General John Ashcroft insisted yesterday that doctor-patient privacy is not threatened by a government attempt to subpoena medical records in a lawsuit over the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
At stake are records documenting certain late-term abortions performed by doctors who have joined in a legal challenge of the disputed ban. President Bush signed the act into law last year.”
John Cole
Oliver- no one’s privacy was at stake. He was not asking for thedetails of the women.
norbizness
“U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras quashed the subpoena, saying Illinois’ medical privacy law superseded the government’s need for the records. Kocoras said patients’ privacy could be jeopardized even if their names were deleted, because their prior medical history would still be disclosed.”
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/02/13/abortion.records.ap/
Rachel
If this is true, as a woman, I’m offended and concerned. But I never hear much of Ashcroft’s misdeeds on the news, therefore I always wonder if his badness is just liberal paranoia. I blame the media’s myopia with Iraq; if the administration has such bad apples as far as rights violations one should not have to hunt and peck through the internet to get them.
Ken Hahn
The abortion lobby cannot allow any records, no matter how sanitized, to be released. The “pro-choice” people want the right to lie as much as they want and any evidence that exposes the lies is “private”. Once you’ve established the right to kill, you certainly don’t want any exposure. Abortion, like slavery, cannot exist with any serious opposition or with any public knowledge.
Wiggle, squirm and fog up the issue as much as you want. The more facts the public knows, the more opposition to abortion grows.
Kimmitt
Whatever. The man tried to violate medical privacy, just as Krugman said.
willyb
From what little I know about this issue, the subpoena process is being undertaken to get a sense for how many of the partial birth abortions are performed to protect the health of the mother, and to get information on what those health issues are.
I am not a woman, but would like to see abortions be legal, safe, and rare (never would be nice). However, killing a baby while it’s in the birth canal (as in partial birth abortion) is barbaric, and should only be done if the life or health of the mother is in jeopardy. At least that’s my opinion.
I don’t think this issue is about privacy rights. I think its about the pro-choice crowd wanting to keep the medical reasons for partial birth abortions in the dark. After all, how are an individual’s privacy rights violated, if nobody knows the identity of the individual(s) behind the information?
Kimmitt
“the subpoena process is being undertaken to get a sense for how many of the partial birth abortions are performed to protect the health of the mother, and to get information on what those health issues are.”
And to do that, he would have to violate previously established standards of medical privacy. It is that simple.
willyb
Kimmitt,
So you’re saying that the general release of information that is not identified with a specific person, such as when the government release the number of cases of prostrate cancer, is a violation of someone’s privacy rights?
Mike Krempasky
You best believe if this was a fight over doctors doing rogue plastic surgery, the privacy advocates would be a little more quiet.
Here’s the crux:
Doctors: “We only do this procedure when a woman’s physical health demands it”
Ashcroft: “Great. Since I have to defend the law in court, how about you prove that?”
Doctors: “Um. No.”
Ken Hahn
The left doesn’t give a damn about privacy except where it applies to abortion or other lefty icon. Guns? No privacy, register them. Property rights? Never, we can send a multitude of inspectors to determine if you endanger some lizard that might not even exist. Corperations? Naw, every word ever uttered in every board room must be public. As said above, other medical procedures? Not on your life. This is a leftist twofer, Ashcroft and abortion. General medical trends aren’t secret. This data must be hidden because it threatens abortion. That’s all. I can hardly wait for the first murderer to object to evidence of the killing as a late term abortion.
Kimmitt
“So you’re saying that the general release of information that is not identified with a specific person, such as when the government release the number of cases of prostrate cancer, is a violation of someone’s privacy rights?”
We’re not talking about that; we’re talking about the release of persons’ medical records with their names crossed out.
These women could be identified from these records with a modicum of private detection. The ruling is obviously correct. Ashcroft believes in privacy when it comes to guns and doesn’t believe in privacy when it comes to abortion. Krugman’s statement is accurate.
willyb
Kimmitt,
Didn’t they get the prostate cancer data from individual records, with names crossed out?
Kimmitt
I have no idea why they would; wouldn’t it make much more sense just to ask doctors and hospitals how many patients with prostate cancer they’ve treated?
willyb
I have no idea why they would; wouldn’t it make much more sense just to ask doctors and hospitals how many patients with prostate cancer they’ve treated?
These men could be identified from these records with a modicum of private detection.
Kimmitt
See, when you just make stuff up, it’s funny, but it isn’t necessarily true.
willyb
Kimmitt,
I was only using the argument you used in an earlier post.
willyb
“I have no idea why they would; wouldn’t it make much more sense just to ask doctors and hospitals how many patients with prostate cancer they’ve treated?”
If you were developing these statistics, wouldn’t you be a little more thorough then talking to doctors and hospitals. Why wouldn’t it be an invasion of privacy if someone other than a particular patient’s doctor looked at his records?