On behalf of Pregnancy Justice, staff attorney Emma Roth, submitted a comment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in response to a proposed rule to strengthen reproductive health care privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Drawing on Pregnancy Justice's work for over twenty years on cases where the state has intervened in the medical decision making of a pregnant person or the prosecution of them or their family on the basis of perceived risk of fetal harm, the comment recognizes that the proposed rule is an important step in the right direction for safeguarding reproductive health care privacy.

After the 1973 Roe decision, anti-abortion groups responded with a strategic plan to reverse the decision and recriminalize abortion through laws that seek to codify the belief that life begins at conception. Some of these criminal statutes create a new crime for causing a pregnancy loss by injuring a pregnant person, and others expand the definitions of "person" or "another" to include zygotes, embryos, and fetuses under existing criminal codes for murder, manslaughter, or related charges.

Pregnancy Justice, in coalition with other reproductive justice organizations and allies, submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in response to a proposed rule to strengthen reproductive health care privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

The comments recognize that the proposed rule is an important step in the right direction for safeguarding reproductive health care information.

After suffering setbacks, the fetal personhood movement has gained support. The theory of a fetus as a legal person has become the framework of anti-abortion states and was highlighted in Justice Alito's majority opinion in Dobbs, creating a path for a fetal right to life argument under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

We submitted written testimony at the request of the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of their July, 2022 hearing, "A Post-Roe America: The Legal Consequences of the Dobbs Decision." Our testimony covers the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

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In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling eviscerating the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it is more critical than ever that health care providers safeguard patients’ right to medical privacy.

For decades, pregnant people across America have been subjected to criminalization and deprivations of liberty on the basis of pregnancy or pregnancy outcomes. Women have been targeted by police and prosecutors, healthcare providers, child welfare workers, and judges who have sought to deprive them of their constitutional rights in the name of "fetal personhood.

June 23, 2022

As we await the anticipated fall of Roe and the subsequent loss of the constitutionally protected right to abortion, Pregnancy Justice today launched a first-of-its-kind, multidisciplinary guide to arm professionals with the tools and resources to reject the criminalization of pregnant people and their pregnancy outcomes — Confronting Pregnancy Criminalization: A Practical Guide for Healthcare Providers, Lawyers, Medical Examiners, Child Welfare Workers, and Policymakers.

Note: this bill failed in committee. A Louisiana abortion ban containing language that would have allowed pregnant women to be charged with homicide in relation to their own pregnancy outcomes, including abortion, is expected to be amended to remove such language after opposition from House Republicans and the state's governor.

Pregnancy Justice is a non-partisan legal advocacy organization dedicated to the welfare of pregnant people and their families. Our testimony draws on over 20 years of experience on cases in which state actors arrested and prosecuted pregnant or postpartum women for experiencing pregnancy losses or engaging in acts or omissions that posed some imagined risk of harm to a fetus.