A physician in Indianapolis is suing the Indiana Department of Health and members of the state medical licensing board in federal court over enforcement of a state law regarding reporting requirements for physicians that perform abortions, the Daily Journal reported Dec. 31. Her lawsuit alleges that the requirement conflicts with new federal health privacy requirements that prohibit such disclosures.
Christina Scifres, MD, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, filed her lawsuit Dec. 23, the same day that physicians were required to start complying with the federal Reproductive Health Care Privacy Rule.
The rule, an amendment to HIPAA, prohibits disclosure of individuals' protected health information when it could be used to investigate, impose liability on, or identify anyone seeking, obtaining, providing, or facilitating reproductive health care. The rule was finalized in April 2024.
Dr. Scifres claims that the federal law directly conflicts with the Indiana law, which mandates that physicians who perform abortions must submit terminated pregnancy reports to the Indiana Department of Health.
According to the lawsuit, these reports are used to "aid in the enforcement of Indiana's laws governing the circumstances in which a physician can legally provide an abortion within the state," rendering it "impossible" for physicians to comply with both laws. The lawsuit also asserts that when there is an incompatibility between state and federal law, federal law supercedes state law.
Dr. Scifres also says in the lawsuit that if she were to comply with the Indiana law, she and her employer would be subject to criminal and civil penalties, in violation of HIPAA. But per the Indiana law, failure to submit a report would result in the termination of her state medical license.
According to the report, terminated pregnancy reports have been a point of political conflict in the wake of Indiana's near-total abortion law. The state stopped releasing individual terminated pregnancy reports in January 2024, but still releases aggregated reports.