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Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Donald Trump’s pick for vice presidential nominee, pressured federal regulators last June to kill a privacy rule that prevents police from accessing the medical records of people seeking reproductive services, according to documents reviewed by The Lever. The rule was designed to prevent state and local police in anti-abortion states from using private records to hunt down and prosecute people who cross state lines in search of abortion services.

If the Trump-Vance ticket wins this year’s presidential election, the new administration could rescind the rule protecting abortion records from police investigation.

The Biden administration proposed the rule in April 2023 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended federal abortion protections. The proposed rule expanded upon the long-established Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s Privacy Rule, which requires appropriate safeguards to protect individuals’ health information. 

While these privacy laws do not usually apply in the case of a criminal investigation, the proposed rule prohibited health officials from divulging records related to reproductive health care — including for fertility issues, contraception, and miscarriages — even if requested by law enforcement.

The following month, Vance and 28 other conservative lawmakers sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra demanding the department withdraw the draft rule. They argued that the Biden administration had overstepped its constitutional bounds and unlawfully infringed on congressional power. 

“Abortion is not health care,” they wrote. “It is a brutal act that destroys the life of an unborn child and hurts women.”

A Vance spokesperson did not respond when asked whether Trump would rescind the rule if he’s reelected. 

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Supporters of the rule said expanding the privacy laws was a welcome and necessary step in protecting those who seek or perform legal abortions from being prosecuted in outside jurisdictions. Planned Parenthood wrote that tightening medical privacy rules was an “essential element” to securing patient data and supporting patient confidentiality in the health care system.

Similarly, advocacy groups say that securing patients’ privacy is paramount, given the recent gutting of abortion rights at the federal level. 

“Since the Dobbs decision, the specter of criminalization has increased significantly, for both patients and providers,” wrote a group of 125 reproductive health and justice organizations in response to the proposed rule. “People must feel — and actually be — safe while accessing health care, but the overturning of Roe v. Wade further erodes this very necessary trust between patients and providers.” 

Research on people targeted for allegedly ending or helping to end a pregnancy found that they were most often reported to law enforcement by health care professionals. Once police got involved, the vast majority of cases led to arrests.

Researchers also argue that criminalizing abortion will increase preexisting racial disparities in incarceration rates. While more than 42 percent of women who get abortions in the U.S. are Black, more than half of all Black women aged 15 to 49 years old live in states with abortion restrictions or plans to implement them.

Meanwhile, the number of people nationwide who are traveling across state lines for abortion care is rising: Nearly one in five abortion patients traveled out of state to obtain this care in the first six months of 2023, compared with one in 10 abortion patients during the same period in 2020. 

This past April, the Biden administration issued the final rule protecting the medical records of people seeking abortion services, and it went into effect last month.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is providing stronger protections to people seeking lawful reproductive health care regardless of whether the care is in their home state or if they must cross state lines to get it,” said Becerra at the time of the rules’ implementation. “With reproductive health under attack by some lawmakers, these protections are more important than ever.”

While he once compared abortion to slavery, Vance has recently tried to soften his public position on abortion — mirroring Trump and the Republican Party as they work to address the fact that many Americans, even in red states, oppose excessively restrictive abortion laws.

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Earlier this month, Vance said on NBC’s Meet The Press that he agreed with a recent Supreme Court ruling protecting people’s access to the abortion drug mifepristone. And in June, The Daily Mail reported that someone with the username “Chuengsteven” — an apparent reference to chief Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung — slightly edited Vance’s Wikipedia page to say he believes “abortion laws should be set by states,” echoing Trump’s position.

Still, Vance has worked hard to undermine efforts to secure abortion access even in states where it’s legal. Last December, he co-signed a letter pressuring the Department of Health and Human Services to continue diverting federal funds meant for low-income mothers to crisis pregnancy centers, which researchers say often fail to adhere to medical and ethical standards to dissuade people from getting abortions.

Immediately after Trump named Vance as his running mate on Monday, President Joe Biden’s campaign began targeting Vance’s anti-abortion positions.

“A Trump-Vance administration will jeopardize reproductive freedom in all 50 states,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the lobbying group Reproductive Freedom for All, during a Biden campaign call.

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