Idaho Legislators Just Want A Little Look-See At Hospitals' Abortion Records, No Big Whoop
They need to dig through patient files for the most honorable reasons, no doubt
Rightwing state legislators in Idaho have sent letters to Idaho hospitals demanding that the hospitals turn over their abortion records, because the lawmakers suspect that hospitals haven’t been reporting accurately. Northwest Public Broadcasting reports that the letters were sent June 15 by the Idaho Freedom Caucus, which isn’t an actual state legislative committee, but that’s OK because the state Lege isn’t in session anyway — the session ended in April.
These are just some diligent lawmakers who want answers, damn it. We suppose it keeps them off the street in the summer at least. Idaho is, like several other Rocky Mountain states, famous for fishing expeditions.
The letters remind the hospitals that failing to report any abortion is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $1,000.
“Has your hospital performed any of the induced abortions that are required to be reported?” the letter states. “If so, has your hospital been in compliance with Idaho’s induced abortion reporting law? If not, is there a reasonable explanation, and will you please provide your induced abortion data so we can make informed policy decisions?”
The letter is signed by state Sen Scott Herndon and 11 other Republicans from both houses of the state Lege, and instructs the recipients to send replies directly to Herndon. He’s the nice fellow who argued shortly before the end of Roe that exceptions for the life of a pregnant patient are too big a concession to Democrats, and who has called for abortions to be classified as homicides.
Idaho Hospital Association spokesperson Greg Morrison said the demand from state legislators came as a bit of a surprise, considering that Idaho actually has a health agency and all.
“It really seemed like an unusual request going around the Department of Health and Welfare to get information that is protected by state law,” he said. “Other than that, we really don’t have a comment.”
The legislators say they need the records because they claim to have noticed something fishy about March 29 testimony by Ken McClure, counsel for the Idaho Medical Association. He said during testimony on Idaho House Bill 374 that doctors and hospitals need to be able to deal with pregnancy complications without fear of going to prison.
HB 374 added very narrow exceptions to Idaho’s abortion law, to permit procedures needed to prevent the death of a pregnant patient, or in cases of rape or incest that are reported to police within 72 hours of the crime. The law specifically allows treatment of ectopic and molar pregnancies. The penalty for performing or attempting to perform an illegal abortion is loss of medical licensure and between two and five years in prison.
The Freedom Caucus said in its letter that it suspected hospitals weren’t complying with mandatory reporting of every single abortion, since only five of Idaho’s counties have reported abortions in the past 11 years, so what’s up with that, you murderers? (We’re paraphrasing a bit. We hope.) The highest numbers of abortions occurred, not surprisingly, in Idaho’s two most populous counties: Ada, with 12,723, and Twin Falls County, with 2,716.
The letter hinted that the true numbers might be far higher, since “Ada County and Twin Falls Counties had well-publicized standalone abortion facilities over the 11 years of reporting through 2021 at the time when Idaho’s current criminal abortion laws were not in effect.”
It’s possible that the seeming discrepancy could be due to rural counties transferring at-risk patients with complications to larger hospitals, or in some cases by hospitals “categorizing elective abortions versus emergency care to save the life of the mother separately,” Northwest Public Media explains.
But that’s not good enough for rightwing state Rep. Heather Scott, who co-chairs the Freedom (but not for baby-killers) Caucus. Scott said in a statement that even emergency abortions must be reported, or else.
“Even Kootenai Health in [Coeur D’Alene] is reporting essentially zero induced abortions over the last 11 years,” Scott wrote. “Either the hospitals like Kootenai Health are doing no abortions, even in medical emergencies, or they have not been following the mandatory induced abortion reporting law.”
It’s not clear exactly why the legislators think they need to snoop around in hospital records, but that’s also none of your business, bud. Idaho patients allegedly have the same HIPAA privacy protections as people in free states, but if they’ve had abortions, they probably need to be carefully watched anyway. We’re sure we’ll eventually find out what these idiots wanted, it’ll be a doozy, and they’ll be reelected anyway.
Idaho’s crackdown on abortion has already scared away enough doctors that one hospital had to close its labor and delivery department earlier this year, due to lack of staff. Further, my godforsaken state in July eliminated its Maternal Mortality Review Committee, so we’re now the only state in the country with no formal process to review maternal deaths. Not that the GOP worries much about already-born women dying anyway.
Idaho hasn’t yet enacted criminal penalties against patients who’ve had abortions, but you never know what God may tell his Servant-Legislators to pass in next year’s session.
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Unless it came from the lege, you have to treat this bullshit as coming from a private citizen. It would break the law to send that info to a private citizen and it breaks the law to send it to this evil schumuck.
What these deeply ignorant people fail to recognize is that PREGNANCY IS REALLY DANGEROUS.
Complications during the pregnancy that gave me my daughter led to her mother and I living in hospitals for a week of each of the last five months of the pregnancy, and she was still early.
Her little brother was so much worse. Car accident leads to health problems leads to three months of full-time hospitalization leads to induced birth at 27 weeks and 57 days in the NICU.
And we were lucky that he was born in the best hospital between Johns Hopkins and Canada.
The total cost was over a quarter of a million dollars just for them to get a chance to survive.