It’s astounding how low the Biden administration will stoop in order to promote abortion.
In its latest move, mid-level bureaucrats have been enlisted to spread medical falsehoods and act as fearmongers, using their own personal tragedies to twist the relationship between doctors and law enforcement. (RELATED: PETER ROFF: COVID Is Over — But Did We Learn Anything From It?)
First, the falsehoods. In a recent opinion piece, Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, shared that she suffered the miscarriage of two children she was expecting. My heart goes out to Rainer and her family.
I know what it’s like to have had “slightly anxious and stressful optimism” for a pregnancy, only to learn that my child perished in the womb. And, like Rainer, I also know what it’s like to have doctors remove the remains of the child who died inside me. It’s not something a mother ever gets over.
The loss Rainer suffered, however, cannot condone her misrepresentations.
“My doctor recommended dilation and curettage (‘D and C’), a common procedure better known as an abortion, to treat my miscarriage,” she writes. Wait just one second.
According to experts at the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), “elective abortion is defined as those drugs or procedures used with the primary intent to end the life of the human being in the womb. Elective abortion is not treatment of a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy nor is it separating the mother and the baby at any gestational age to save a mother’s life.” Referring to miscarriage and the associated care as “an abortion” is far from the truth.
Second, the fearmongering.
Rainer is part of an administration that has manipulated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to undermine state laws restricting abortion. HIPPA is a federal law that created national standards to stop sensitive patient health information being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge.
What does HIPAA have to do with abortion? “Right now, somewhere in the country, a woman is leaving her home state where abortion is banned, like my home state of Arizona, to receive lawful abortion care in another state,” Rainer writes. “Law enforcement in her home state may be gearing up to seek out her protected health information from that out-of-state clinic where she is receiving lawful health care. They may then target her when she goes home, or go after her home state doctor, a doctor who had nothing to do with the care.”
Really? Rainer lists no state where women are subject to criminal prosecution for undergoing an abortion, because there is none. A recent analysis of abortion statutes by the Charlotte Lozier Institute shows that women “will not be prosecuted in their state for seeking or obtaining abortion.”
Rainer next unveils the administration’s “solution” to a non-existent problem: threatening doctors who do comply with law enforcement with criminal prosecution.
A new Biden HIPAA rule prohibits doctors and hospitals from disclosing information about “lawful” abortions in response to any civil or criminal investigations inquiring about the legality of the abortions themselves. And all abortions, no matter where performed, must be presumed lawful unless and until law enforcement can show they are unlawful. Roger Severino, who held Rainer’s position under the prior administration, warns that now “not only can doctors refuse to comply with warrants, they ordinarily must refuse or ‘be subject to potential criminal liability.’”
AAPLOG’s Dr. Christina Francis adds that: “The rule, which is clearly intended in part to prevent the enforcement of pro-life laws, is written in vague and confusing language that may also impact investigations into crimes such as sexual abuse and trafficking.”
Only recently have women begun to share their experiences of miscarriage. Doing so can often help in the process of mourning and healing.
Unfortunately, Melainie Fontes Rainer’s decision to tell the story of her miscarriages seems aimed at advancing the Biden administration’s legal cover for scoundrels with a medical degree who either perform or refer women for abortions in states that have criminalized doing so.
Andrea Picciotti–Bayer is director of the Conscience Project.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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