EDITORIAL
Abortion record search is pointless and wrong

We sincerely hope federal judges around the nation follow the example of U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras of Chicago, who quashed a U.S. Justice Department's subpoena for confidential medical records of patients who have undergone a type of late-term abortion.

Why, one might ask, would Justice Department lawyers snoop into patients' private medical records in the first place?

Apparently, Attorney General John Ashcroft believes they have the right.

In response to a legal challenge to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Ashcroft is seeking medical records from six hospitals for the purpose of rebutting the claims of doctors who have performed late-term abortions.

Doctors challenging the federal ban on late-term abortion contend the law is unconstitutional because it's overly broad and doesn't make any exceptions for women whose health is compromised by a second- or third-trimester pregnancy.

Why Ashcroft would need to look at medical files to dispute their claim is beyond us.

Nonetheless, Ashcroft insists that the physicians opposing the ban should be blocked from testifying in their lawsuit unless their medical records are turned over.

And some judges support his position, including U.S. District Judge Richard Conway Casey of New York, who temporarily blocked the government from enforcing the ban after President Bush signed the law last November.

Fortunately, others don't: Kocoras said the Illinois medical privacy law superseded the government's need for the records, and that the patients' privacy could be jeopardized even if their names were deleted because their prior medical history would still be disclosed.

"An emotionally charged decision will be rendered more so if the confidential medical records are released to the public, however redacted, for use in public litigation in which the patient is not even a party," Kocoras wrote.

Meanwhile, hospitals in Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania have refused to comply because of patient privacy concerns.

Ashcroft's response to the lawsuit is nothing short of intimidation. If the Justice Department has a solid case against late-term abortion, there should be no need to rifle through private medical records, even if the patients' names are deleted.

We've repeatedly held that the decision to have a late-term abortion should be between a woman and her doctor. The procedure, clinically known as "intact dilation and extraction," and "partial-birth abortion" to critics, is something most women would go to great lengths to avoid. But that's not always possible.

Ashcroft's move to intrude on patients' privacy adds salt to the wound of this regressive ban.