The Tennessee attorney general’s office has subpoenaed four medical groups in the state for records of abortions performed over the last several years as part of a lawsuit over the exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban, court documents obtained by the Guardian show.
The four subpoenas were issued this spring to Vanderbilt University medical center and a Tennessee hospital run by the national Catholic chain Ascension, as well as two smaller medical practices in Tennessee, Heritage Medical Associates and the Women’s Group of Franklin.
Although each subpoena is different, they broadly ask these organizations to turn over extensive information about instances in which they may have provided abortions, including the number of abortions performed since 2022 and, in some of the subpoenas, all “documents and communications” related to those abortions.
When and if the medical providers turn in the records, they are legally allowed to preserve “all patient confidentiality as necessary”, according to the subpoenas. A protective order has also been issued to block the records from being used to investigate the hospitals and medical providers outside of the scope of the lawsuit, as well as to potentially mark even the anonymized patient records as “confidential”.
The sweeping requests raise questions about red-state attempts to track abortion providers in a post-Roe v Wade US. In the three years since the US supreme court overturned Roe, reproductive rights activists have grown increasingly concerned about government efforts to collect information on abortions, especially as states such as Louisiana and Texas have recently launched efforts to penalize abortion providers.
Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis who studies the legal history of reproduction, shared her concerns that the Tennessee subpoenas could have “a tremendous chilling effect”.
“Republican legislators have recognized that doctors are already not performing procedures that they – Republican legislators – say are justified under exceptions,” Ziegler said.
“The message being sent here is that every single decision, even ones that would have been legal, then would be second-guessed.”
The subpoenas were issued as part of a 2023 lawsuit brought by several Tennessee women and doctors who are seeking to broaden the exceptions in the state’s abortion ban. Although Tennessee – like every other state with an abortion ban – technically permits…
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