Tag: HIPAA

Intervention

People with money will buy a baby. A wealthy couple suffering infertility will find a young woman who is expecting and offer to trade support during the pregnancy for the baby at the end. One of their conditions was that they be present at all of her doctor’s appointments. In the case of today’s story, they also offered a sympathetic “support” person. This was the man’s sister who had gone through a teen pregnancy when she was 17. She is now 24 years old and raising her 7 year old son.

This sister never had to consider giving up her baby. Her parents supported her so well, she didn’t even have to think about going to work after her baby’s birth. So this support person asked the pregnant young lady how much money she would need to keep and raise her baby. She did the math. It was very conservative and even included a schedule for repayment. Then this support person said I will give you everything you are asking for and then some – more baby supplies and more rent money. She offered to pay for vocational training for this young expectant mother after delivery. And she would not have to pay anything back, though she insisted that she would.

Long story short – she backed out of her adoption agreement with the couple. Of course, they are not only heartbroken but mad at his sister for her intervention. The young woman had to block the couple and the sister had to move away to stop their harassment. The sister simply could not allow this young woman who wanted to keep her baby to loose it. She asks, Am I the asshole for screwing up my brother’s adoption ? Of course not.

It is so wrong that hopeful adoptive parents are able to be given rights to view medical records and allowed at doctor’s appointments. It is a violation of HIPAA and the right to privacy, even if the mom signs a waiver. Being present for these visits is so coercive. Income shouldn’t be a determining factor in parenthood. So many mothers who lose their children had no option to keep them and no one to help them keep their baby.

One comment asked – When a human is in need, but gives no sign of not wanting their child, how does anyone deliberately separate them from their child and still sleep at night ? This couple found the expectant mother in a Facebook Buy Nothing group. These are often referred to as grey market adoptions.

There are so many hopeful adoptive parents, adoption lawyers, baby brokers etc all focused solely on getting babies. Not one of these ever bothers to ask the mother if they *want* their child or inquire how little the financial cost would be, to actually to keep the mother and child together.

Be Very Worried

Generally speaking, I have the least concern about my privacy of anyone in my family.  I am an open book and don’t mind being a straight shooter about what I think and believe.  I do have concerns about data privacy for any pregnant women who does a google search related to her physical condition.

Before the recent overturning of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court – pregnancy crisis centers outnumbered actual abortion clinics by 3 to 1.  Like so many issues with data privacy, there is now a definite concern about what could potentially happen with the information these organizations collect – especially in the states with near total bans on abortion and bounties offered to ordinary citizens for reporting on other citizens.

In the past decade, a new data-collection has been rolled out in pregnancy crisis centers. Time magazine reviewed two dozen pregnancy-center privacy disclosures and although many reference HIPAA as well as provide an assurance of broad data privacy, the promises have no legal foundation. Data collected in a REAL medical clinic is not the same as the rules that apply to these places. They are un-regulated by federal law. They are NOT subject to federal privacy laws.

Most of these pregnancy-center networks use data-collection interfaces that can track a woman who interacts with their organization – whether it is in person, on the telephone or on their website. One 24-hour hotline collects the name, location and other demographic information related to the caller. Some even will ask outright what the woman plans to do with her pregnancy. The technologies collect and centralize vast amounts of people’s private information and there is no clear indication of what use this information will be put to.

In cases filed under the new state abortion ban laws, lawyers could subpoena information from pregnancy centers.  There is a precedent for using such data to arrest or threaten legal action against women. Since the advent of Roe v Wade, there have still been more than 1,700 instances where law enforcement took some legal action against women in cases related to their pregnancies according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.  In fact, internet search histories and information gathered by actual medical  professionals was even presented as evidence.

Those who could be motivated by bounties might include the pregnancy-center staff, any of their partners, vendors or contractors.  After all, the staff that works in that kind of advocacy work does so because they believe strongly that an abortion is equal to murder.

~ information in this blog includes content from Time magazine’s article titled “Compromised State” in which a Time investigation found anti-abortion pregnancy centers may expose women to new legal risks. The article was written by Abigail Abrams and Vera Bergengruen.