When Did Our Right Become a Disease?
While in office, former president Clinton declared that “Abortion should be safe, legal and rare.” Last week, the Boston Globe reported that support for legalized abortion among Democratic White men has declined nine percent in the last year, and that 41% of Americans now favor increased restrictions on access to abortion. I can’t help but wonder how categorizing a constitutional right as something that should be prevented has influenced this shift.
When he spoke those words, President Clinton likely did not anticipate that 41% of Americans might support the latest law out of Oklahoma. The state’s new law requires physicians to report personal information about abortion patients to the state, which will post the information online.
The new requirement looks like many state laws that require healthcare providers to report the date of birth, sex, race, and residence of people who test positive for infectious diseases like tuberculosis. Ostensibly, infectious disease reporting helps officials protect the public against outbreaks, and in most instances, patients’ personal information is strictly confidential.
With this law, Oklahoma not only tests the strength of our nation’s medical confidentiality laws, it places abortion in the category of diseases from which the public needs to be protected.
The Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging the law. Hopefully the litigation will shed some light on the state’s justification for treating a constitutional right as a public health threat (and the women who exercise it as the purveyors of disease).
Lauren R.S. Mendonsa