Tennessee requires data on the abortion of hospitals in the case of prohibition exceptions | US News

The Office of the Attorney General of Tennessee has assigned four medical groups in the state for abortions files carried out in recent years in the framework of a continuation of the exceptions to the almost total prohibition of state abortion of the State, of the court documents obtained by the Guardian Show.

The four assignments were published this spring at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a hospital in the Tennessee led by the National Catholic Channel Ascension, as well as two little medical practices in Tennessee, Heritage Medical Associates and the group of women of Franklin.

Although each assignment is different, they largely ask these organizations to put in -depth information on cases where they may have provided abortions, including the number of abortions made since 2022 and, in certain assignments, all “documents and communications” linked to these abortions.

When and if medical providers make the files, they are legally authorized to preserve “all the confidentiality of patients if necessary”, according to the assistants. A protection prescription was also made to prevent files from being used to investigate hospitals and medical suppliers outside the scope of the trial, as well as to potentially mark the anonymized files of patients as “confidential”.

Balayage requests raise questions on red state attempts to follow abortions of abortions in a post-Roe against Wade US. During the three years following the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court canceled the ROE, militants of reproduction rights are increasingly concerned about the efforts of the government to collect information on the abortions, in particular as states such as Louisiana and Texas Recently launched efforts to penalize abortion suppliers.

Mary Ziegler, professor at the University of California, Davis who studies the legal history of reproduction, shared her concerns about the fact that the assignment of Tennessee could have “an enormous scary”.

“Republican legislators have acknowledged that doctors are not already carrying out procedures as they – republican legislators – say they are justified by exceptions,” said Ziegler.

“The message sent here is that each decision, even that which would have been legal, would then be to divide.”

The assignments were issued as part of a trial in 2023 brought by several women and doctors of Tennessee who seek to expand the exceptions of the prohibition of state abortion. Although Tennessee – like all other states with an abortion ban – technically authorizes abortions in medical emergencies, these women say they have been refused medically necessary abortions. Doctors across the country have declared that the exceptions anchored in abortion prohibitions are so vaguely formulated that they are incompatible with medical standards, forcing doctors to delay or deny care until a patient falls sufficiently sick to qualify legally for treatment.

At least five pregnant women have been died under abortion bans in Georgia and Texas. In the years that followed the fall of Roe, more women pregnant from Texas have also started to be diagnosed with sepsis – a deadly condition – or almost bleeding to death after having made a miscarriage, according to propublica reports.

Tennessee lawyers, however, declared in court that state abortion exceptions are achievable as written. The failure of certain doctors to interpret with precision the law does not justify the modification of the prohibition of the State, supported Tennessee, especially since the legislature of the State adopted a bill in 2025 which sought to clarify the circumstances in which people can obtain abortions.

The assignments issued to medical suppliers ask them to put back “all protocols, political, directives, practice guides” that they have used to determine if patients can obtain abortions. Vanderbilt’s assignment also requires files of the Nashville hospital abortion committee, which deliberated on the question of whether and how to provide legal abortions to patients, including all “documents and communications” which can reveal the resolution of each case considered by the Committee.

The other assignments have been issued to at least a medical practice which employs a doctor from Tennessee who is part of the trial. They ask these practices to count the number of abortions they have carried out since 2020, two years before the fall of Roe. They also ask for files in cases where doctors did not provide abortions because they thought that the prohibition of Tennessee prevented them from doing so.

The assimilated groups and the Office of the attorney general of Tennessee did not respond to requests for comments from the Guardian.

Despite the protections of the court in place to prevent assignment files from fleeing, the insurance of state representatives may not be enough to repress the fears of doctors, prosecution, prosecution Said Ziegler. She highlighted the case of Adriana Smith, a dead woman who died of the brain in Georgia who was maintained in life until she gave birth to a baby by cesarean in June. While the prosecutor general of Georgia said that the prohibition of the almost total abortion of the state did not have to keep doctors to keep pregnant women in life, Smith’s doctors would have estimated that the language of the ban was so strict that they still had no choice but to keep it alive.

“Before one of these data requests, many doctors and providers were really worried about civil or criminal liability,” said Ziegler. “I don’t see how it will help things.”