Justices Deny Challenge on Abortion Records

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for health authorities in South Carolina to collect names, addresses and other information about women seeking abortions, a power that doctors say violates a fundamental duty to protect patient privacy.

The high court rejected a challenge to the state’s plan to catalog medical records from clinics and doctors who perform abortions. The court’s action, taken without comment, ends a lengthy legal challenge that had kept the law on hold.

South Carolina is the only state whose law allows regulators to see, copy and store abortion patients’ medical records without stiff requirements that the information be kept confidential, said lawyers representing a clinic and outside medical organizations.

“For every individual, having your private medical records kept confidential is important. In the abortion context, it’s even more important,” said Bonnie Scott Jones of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented an abortion clinic in Greenville, S.C. “Women are subjected to harassment, violence, if their abortion decision is disclosed.”

South Carolina wants abortion clinics to open all files, including patient medical records, if state investigators ask to see them. Supporters say that the new laws will improve state oversight of abortion providers, and that they are part of ordinary state record-keeping.

Trey Walker, spokesman for the South Carolina attorney general’s office, said he was pleased that the legal challenges were over.

Patient medical records ordinarily are a private matter, although there are exceptions. Doctors, hospitals and insurers can share information among themselves, and police or other authorities can seek records in criminal investigations, public health emergencies or, for example, when child abuse is suspected.

Also, Monday, the high court rejected an appeal by Kentucky of a ruling that barred the display of a monument with the Ten Commandments on the state Capitol grounds in Frankfort.

Without comment, the justices let stand a federal appeals court ruling that it would violate church-state separation under the Constitution’s 1st Amendment.