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At the end of January, a state grand jury in Louisiana indicted a doctor from the state of New York for providing medication abortion to a Louisiana resident. The patient’s mother was also arrested and indicted.
Around the same time, Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Department was scrubbing pages with the word “abortion” from its website and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was deleting web documents on reproductive rights issues, sexual health, and intimate partner violence.
Now, the HHS website has gone a step further and actually scrubbed information on HIPAA protections for reproductive rights – which should raise *serious* alarm bells for all of us.
Look – we don’t know for sure why they’re doing this. But we can certainly make an educated guess :
The only reasonable explanation for this information being removed is that the Trump Administration plans to roll back medical privacy protections for reproductive health data – a move clearly designed to make it easier for law enforcement to access women’s abortion records.
I introduced the My Body, My Data Act during my first term in Congress because the privacy surrounding our bodily autonomy is an issue I care deeply about [[link removed]] – and one that affects millions of people all around the country. The legislation’s goal was to create a new national standard to protect our reproductive and sexual health data.
We desperately need this because in addition to our official medical records, our own online behavior can lead to serious consequences in the post-Roe era. The information we leave behind in period and fertility tracking apps, ride-sharing apps, and search engines can currently be legally sold and shared *without your consent* with advertisers, data brokers, and law enforcement. My bill would create clear legal guidelines to prevent that from happening.
The bill hasn’t been passed yet – and with the current House leadership, it isn’t likely to be considered in the immediate future.
But the margin in the House is razor-thin right now – 218 Republicans to our 215 Democrats – and between special elections and the midterms, we could see a Democratic House sooner rather than later. And when we do, we MUST pass the My Body, My Data Act without delay, and send a clear signal that this is a priority for the American people.
If you’re with me on this, please sign my petition in support of the My Body, My Data Act and a continued effort on establishing privacy protections for our reproductive and sexual health data. [[link removed]]
While there’s a lot to focus on right now, this is one issue I will keep speaking out about over and over again – because we cannot stand by while women are targeted by this Administration for practicing our fundamental right of bodily autonomy.
Thanks for reading,
Sara
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Congresswoman Sara Jacobs
California’s 51st District
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