The Reproductive Privacy Act Upheld
The Reproductive Privacy Act was enacted in Rhode Island in 2019. It prohibits the state, its agencies, and its political subdivisions from interfering in an individual’s reproductive health care.
Specifically, it prohibits:
- Restricting an individual person from preventing, commencing, continuing, or terminating that individual’s pregnancy prior fetal viability.
- Interfering with an individual person’s decision to continue that individual’s pregnancy after fetal viability.
- Restricting an individual person from terminating that individual’s pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to preserve the health or life of that individual.
- Restricting the use of evidence-based, medically appropriate standards that are in compliance with state and federal statutes and department of health regulations and standards.
- Restricting access to evidence-based, medically recognized methods of contraception or abortion or the provision of such contraception or abortion except in accordance with evidence-based medically appropriate standards that are in compliance with state and federal statutes and department of health regulations and standards.
In a challenge against the constitutionality of the Act by the Catholics for Life and other plaintiffs, the Supreme Court of Rhode Island upheld the lower court’s decision that the law was valid. The Court’s decision was made on Wednesday, May 4, just two days after the leaked draft opinion regarding the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization was publicly shared.
Privacy is a central issue in both of these cases.
A significant case that preceded Roe v. Wade (the case that could potentially be overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health) was Griswold v. Connecticut which held that the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy against governmental intrusion. The Constitution does not explicitly grant a right to privacy, but the right was deemed to be implied by other rights explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights.
The governmental intrusion in the instant cases would be intrusion into a woman’s bodily autonomy. Enforcement of laws banning abortion would necessarily require some amount of monitoring or scrutinizing the actions a woman takes with her own body. It would have to violate her privacy to establish that she had undergone an abortion. In that respect, even though abortion itself isn’t clearly related to privacy, its enforcement, investigation, and prosecution would definitely impact a woman’s privacy.
The current hot topic in the country is abortion. A consequence of abortion being in the limelight is that privacy, too, is garnering lots of attention. Now is a very important time for companies to ensure that they take consumer privacy seriously. Clarip can help with that. We help companies with simplified privacy policies, data mapping, consent management, vendor management, automated data subject request fulfillment, and much, much more. Visit us at www.clarip.com or call us at 1-888-252-5653 to learn more.
Email Now:
Mike Mango, VP of Sales
mmango@clarip.com