Exaggerated privacy issues hinder proposal
Joe Schroeder, Staff Writer
photo: Graphic by Sarah Powell
A new Oklahoma law may, among other things, require women receiving abortions in Oklahoma clinics to fill out a detailed survey. The results will be published by the Oklahoma State Health Department.
House Bill 1595 would, if implemented, accomplish two things. The first would be to ban the practice of sex-selective abortions, or choosing to abort a child based on its sex. The second, most controversial part of the bill creates the Statistical Reporting of Abortion Act.
Under this part of the act, each woman receiving an abortion would be required to complete an Individual Abortion Form containing 37 often multipart questions about her personal information. These include her reasons for having an abortion, the county the abortion was performed in, past pregnancy history, method of payment for the abortion and age of the unborn child.
These forms would then be posted on the Internet along with the results of the survey questions.
It would not contain the names or addresses of the questioned, and the act does request that the State Department of Health “ensures that none of the information included in its public reports could reasonably lead to the identification of any individual female about whom information is reported.”
Supporters of the bill say they hope to use the statistical information provided by the Individual Abortion Forms to better craft policies aimed at reducing the number of abortions performed in Oklahoma.
Opponents of the bill contend that it violates women’s privacy and attempts to intimidate women into not having an abortion through that violation. They argue that the survey results could easily be traced to individual women in small towns.
This latter contention does not stand up to scrutiny. Only three counties in Oklahoma actually perform abortions. Women from other counties travel to one of these three, making the determination of which survey belongs to whom extraordinarily difficult.
Given that the forms contain no names or addresses, the probability of any woman’s personal information falling into malicious hands is infinitesimally small.
The sanctity of privacy in abortion matters is an unparalleled and not-very-funny joke. It is being used to block even the most sensible of abortion policies by imagining evil bogeymen waiting to do the nigh-impossible: to acquire information on individual women.
Without statistical data on the methods, reasons and difficulties prompting women to have abortions, state legislators will have a hard time crafting programs to lift some of the burdens that cause women to choose abortion. Virtually all participants in abortion discussions feel that reducing the number of abortions would be a good thing.
Yet, “reproductive rights advocates,” as they so euphemistically term themselves, cry foul at any law that attempts to lay the groundwork for policies that might achieve that goal.
This is not to say that I believe the present law is perfect. It is not. There is no real reason to post the Individual Abortion Forms, as opposed to just the survey results, to the Internet. But it is not nearly as bad as it is being made out to be. The law is currently being challenged in court on the grounds that it violates the state constitution.
This possible constitutional violation is, notably, not related to privacy issues, but rather about whether or not the bill rolls up more than one topic in its contents, which is barred by the state of Oklahoma.
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