Planned Parenthood Applauds HHS Plan to Strengthen HIPAA Privacy Protections

WASHINGTON DC — Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced its final rule to strengthen protections under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This important rule protects reproductive health data, as state attacks on abortion access since the 2022 Dobbs decision continue to  jeopardize the privacy of patients and health care providers. This final rule is part of the Biden administration’s work to defend patients’ access to reproductive health care, regardless of age, gender, pregnancy status, or outcome.

Statement from Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

“We are in the middle of a public health crisis, where politically-motivated lawmakers hostile to our rights and freedoms are attacking every facet of reproductive health care, from abortion access to birth control. This is not complicated: Your personal health care data should never be used against you. Not by prosecutors, not by lawmakers, and not by private citizens who have been encouraged to enforce abortion bans. Everyone, no matter where they live or how much money they have, should be able to access the health care they need — free of fear that their health information will be compromised.

“Planned Parenthood health centers are committed to protecting patient data and ensuring that everyone can get the care they need, when they need it. All patients and providers deserve champions fighting for them at all levels of government — and we are grateful to Secretary Becerra and the Biden-Harris administration for their continued commitment to the fight for reproductive freedom.”

Important changes made by this final rule include:

• Better protecting people’s private health information from being used against them when they seek legal reproductive health care, including if they seek care out of state. In the final rule, reproductive health care is defined broadly, and explicitly includes abortion, which ensures broad patient protection.
• Ensuring patients can be open and honest with their providers about all of the care they have received, without fear that a state that bans abortion could use that information against them in an investigation, criminal prosecution, or civil or administrative proceeding.

When access to health care is restricted, people suffer. Politically motivated attacks on reproductive health care have devastating real-life consequences, disproportionately harming Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, people with low incomes, and those living in rural areas — the same people who already face systemic racism and structural barriers to getting health care.

This final rule comes nearly two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned and at a time when the Supreme Court is hearing two cases that could further restrict abortion access across the country by limiting the availability of a safe pill for medication abortion and ending the right to emergency abortion care.

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Planned Parenthood Action Fund is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit membership organization formed as the advocacy and political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The Action Fund engages in educational, advocacy, and limited electoral activity, including grassroots organizing, legislative advocacy, and voter education.