Privacy test: medical records and the police.

• Author: Rimensnyder, Sara
• Position: Citings - Judge requisitions medical information from women's health clinic

IN A SMALL town, they say, everyone knows your business. A county judge in Iowa is pushing that tendency to an extreme by requisitioning medical information from a local women's health clinic.

The trouble in Storm Lake, a town of about 10,000 in Buena Vista County, started in late May when an abandoned newborn, possibly born prematurely, was left for dead in a local recycling center. With the police department at a loss for leads, County Attorney Phil Havens sought access to the names and address of every woman who took a pregnancy test at the town's Planned Parenthood clinic during a nine-month period. Once authorities had the names, they would check that each woman gave birth to a living infant; when this wasn't possible, they'd question the mothers.

After some legal back and forth between Planned Parenthood and the courts, Judge Frank Nelson ordered the clinic to hand over the information by August 17 or risk being charged with contempt. Jill June, the president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, refuses to compromise her patients' privacy. "What they've asked us to do is wrong;' she says. "It violates the laws of Iowa, it violates the confidentiality and trust these women place in us. As much as we'd like to help with the investigation, we simply cannot cooperate."

Havens, the county...