Texas sues for medical records of women who are seeking out of state abortions

While Texas cannot punish women directly if they travel out of state to have an abortion, it can charge anyone who assists or performs the medical procedure

Texas has sued the federal government to try and get around federal health privacy protections so officials can get information on women who've had out-of-state abortions.

The state filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in Lubbock, Texas, targeting a law enacted in 2000 to protect Americans' medical privacy. In April, an addition to the law prohibited the disclosing of medical records for criminal or civil investigations if they dealt with “the mere act of seeking, obtaining, providing or facilitating reproductive health care.”

In simple terms: if an entity wants to bring a criminal or civil suit against a woman who sought an abortion outside of the state, under the current law they cannot access her records. Texas is suing to get access to those records and will use them to prosecute anyone who assists a woman who leaves the state to have an abortion.

The lawsuit argues that the current rules contradict other federal laws that allow investigators to access protected medical records for "law enforcement purposes."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the change to federal law was a "backdoor attempt" to weaken Texas's strict anti-abortion legislation, according to the New York Times.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting on February 23, 2024, in National Harbor, Maryland. Paxton is fighting federal laws protecting the private medical records of women who have traveled out of Texas to receive abortions (AFP via Getty Images)

“The Biden administration’s motive is clear: to subvert lawful state investigations on issues that the courts have said the states may investigate," he said.

The April regulation was a response to abortion bans in Republican state legislatures following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022. Several states, including Texas, are trying to expand their bans to include women who travel out of state to seek reproductive health care services.

While it's currently unclear if Texas has tried to dig up the records of women who have traveled out of state for abortions, Paxton has demanded records concerning gender-transition procedures conducted in Washington state and Georgia.

A judge blocked his attempts to access those records in March.

States have worked with investigators to dig into individual's medical records, but that is typically when the investigation is focused on fraud that involves a person's health claims, according to the Times.

The federal government has made clear it does not want Texas poking around in women's medical records, and several states with Democratic legislatures have passed laws or executive orders to protect women and their doctors from states with far-reaching abortion bans.