US senators seek ban on sale of health location data

A group of senators wants to make it illegal for data brokers to sell sensitive location and health information of individuals' medical treatment. A bill filed this week by five senators, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), comes in anticipation the Supreme Court's upcoming ruling that could overturn the 49-year-old Roe v …

[ITS Retired]

Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

Therefor being religiously based, control by medically ignorant political bodies, has no place in modern law. Abortion is and should be a medical decision between the woman and her doctor and not be the political football is has become.

When will women get full human Rights and as much autonomy of their own bodies as men have?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

I guess you haven't read who's fueling this, in this specific case it's the women :-/. I feel it has been this way for a while too. Ask yourself, which sex should/would care more about this topic? I'm not implying men don't care, but in 2022 USA, I think the men care a lot less than the women. I know in my specific city that if you see a male protestor outside an abortion clinic that it's a memorable thing (there's almost always 2 women... the same 2 women though)

I hope/assume all this nonsense will be shot down and whatever is actually wanted will become a rider or some other "settlement". In government, if you want 500 tubes of toothpaste, ask for 50,000.

Roe Vs. Wade? More like Left Vs. Right... please won't someone burn down both sides of this political system ran by the over-privileged.

[Trigun]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

It's not as simple as that for some. There's the rights of the unborn involved and (for the religious) abortion is actual murder - and I can see some of the logic.

Personally, women having autonomy over their body *must* win (within reason- see below), but it's a very uneasy win because of the above. This means that, as the final arbiter, they carry the serious moral responsibility and there's no shrugging it off on to anyone else (apart from in cases of rape, perhaps).

Additionally, I think there is a point where deliberately aborting IS murder (don't tell me aborting a healthy 8th month old foetus is acceptable - I'll fight you to the ends of the earth on that) which is why we have the current system in the UK which, I suppose, is a compromise.

BTW if Roe vs Wade is struck down and the individual states decide then you'll just get abortion tourism, which is what used to happen with irish women coming across to the UK as their society diidn't allow abortions.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

>you'll just get abortion tourism

If your medical insurance covers it, and you can afford the flights, and your employer gives you the time off.

After all politician's mistresses in the south need a way of fixing their mistakes.

It's almost as if this bill, aswell as pandering to their religous right voter base, is aimed at poor/disadvantaged women

[Trigun]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

>If your medical insurance covers it, and you can afford the flights, and your employer gives you the time off.

That's certainly a good point

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

> don't tell me aborting a healthy 8th month old foetus is acceptable

A compromise solution. The Bible clearly states that life begins with the first breath. So a suitably trained obstetrician(*) with a quick draw and a Glock can deal with problem before the baby cries.

That way the hospital still gets to bill you for delivery, and the NRA and the GOP will fight for your rights to access the procedure.

(* police would traditionally be used, but that looks a lot like socialised medicine and anyway the police in Tx are a bit squeamish and probably wouldn't want to enter the delivery room)

[Jedit]

"the police in Tx are a bit squeamish"

The Uvalde police department's refusal to release the body camera footage from the recent massacre has already made a lot of people strongly suspect that they don't find it difficult to shoot children.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

So if they eliminate Roe v Wade I guess they are fine with continuing to keep male masturbation legal and men spilling "life" onto the floor. I don't believe that anyone "owns" another person's body, eliminating Roe v Wade will just return society to the days before slavery was considered to be bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

It seems (almost at least) entirely obvious, that expelling a 2 celled zygote is in no way morally troublesome.

It seems entirely obvious, that aborting (with end of life* following) a foetus/baby seconds before natural birth would occur, is only in some very narrow scenarios even a conceivable course of action (scenarios in which the end of life is a side effect and in which the actions that lead to that end of life is to preserve the life of the woman or perhaps a twin).

Human nature is to conclude that there must be some cut off point in between those two. Some point where it shifts. That is, of course, not necessarily so.

In the coming time I think a very important point will be the state of medical science, and our ability to incubate those that are born too early and 'carry them to term', so to speak, without the involvement of the mother being necessary - here initially talking strictly about someone who wants a child, but gives birth prematurely.

I fully support the right to abortion, but I think there's quite a complication looming as medical science improves.

Not having to carry an unwanted foetus is one thing, but what about when an abortion doesn't have to mean end of life? Who gets to decide if an abortion also means end of life - and who pays for the potential incubation if it doesn't (not the woman, I would say)?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that women absolutely have a right to choose, and I while I don't think you need many more arguments than something along the lines of what Judith Jarvis Thomson I think more exist.

The only real gripe I might have comes with the increased capabilities of medical science. I don't think the right to an abortion necessarily gives a right to end of life (I also don't necessarily think that it doesn't give that). It's not currently a highly pressing issue, but as we progress I suspect it might become more relevant.

To refer to Thomson's argument. You don't have to let the violinist remain hooked up to you, but do you get to decide that he shouldn't get to try a more risky procedure when he is unhooked from you?

* I use end of life to try to avoid using "kill" or "death" or similar. I'm not sure if it works as intended for all, but the intent is to avoid loaded terms that imply something more than a living collection of cells no longer living. "Life" might be too loaded for it, but it's the best I could think of.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

and (for the religious) abortion is actual murder

Yet those same people (mostly) enthusiastically endorse the death penalty. Most of them claim to be Christian but obviously haven't *actually* read the Bible properly..

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

You folks actually assume much if you think all opposition to abortion is based on religion. This is untrue. I am not religious and oppose abortion except under specific circumstances.

So far as supporting the death penalty vs opposing abortion goes, there is a huge difference between the two. An abortion involves killing a person because they're inconvenient. The person committed no crime and did not receive a trial. A decision was made to kill that person.

This, of course, does not include rape or incest, where a crime was committed, nor does it include an unviable child or a case where the woman would die. These are legitimate reasons to abort. Now we get into the realm of zealots, who believe that no pregnancy should be terninated when even nature will sometimes terminate it, ie a miscarry. These people push things too far.

An execution, on the other hand, involves a person who committed a crime. Evidence was compiled, the criminal had the opportunity to defend thenselves in court, and were found guilty. And, at least in the US, any trial that results in a death penalty is automatically appealed, by law, so the criminal has a second chance. Further, a convicted criminal may continue to appeal right up until the sentence is carried out. Many spend more than 10 years on death row.

It's a shame that a child being aborted does not have the same legal protections from the death penalty that a mass murderer does.

[Swarthy]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

Is it murder if I refuse to donate a kidney? Or if I don't donate blood?

Is it murder to evict someone in the winter and they end up dying of exposure?

Is it murder every time a doctor, hospital or insurance company refuses medical care due to lack of funding?

If you class all of the above as "murder" maybe I will listen when you say that abortion is murder as well.

Extra Credit: When the choice is between an abortion or the mother's life, is the baby murdering the mother, or does it count as self-defense?

[Swarthy]

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

Addendum: If someone is seeking an abortion at 8 months, they do not want that abortion - they need it.

Late term abortions are usually used when the fetus is already dead or has developed anomalies that will make them non-viable outside of the womb, or the mother has developed complications that will kill her if untreated. No one goes through 8 months of pregnancy and then decides "You know what - I don't want to do this anymore"

[Binraider]

No doubt some republican trash will be offended by the article. Not that if expect many to read el reg, or even if they did, had the ability to read the article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no

@Binraider: other way round. Its snowflakes who cant read outside the approved canonical works and are offended by anything. The central issue is tracking data of _all_ people being collected and sold.

[M.V. Lipvig]

No doubt you're wrong, newb. I've been on this site far longer than you, and I'm as Republican as they come.

[Gene Cash]

"could be used to track and prosecute women across the US"

Um, but can't the cops simply walk in to any telco with a court order to hand over this data? As per "which it routinely shares with government agencies"?

So actually this bill doesn't do a god damned thing except grandstanding and theatre.

"states have proposed making it illegal for citizens to seek abortions in locations where the procedure is legal"

I would think this would run afoul of interstate commerce rules. If someone gets an abortion in Florida, Texas and Mississippi can't do a damn thing about it. No different than if I go over the state line to buy booze.

[Filippo]

Re: "could be used to track and prosecute women across the US"

> So actually this bill doesn't do a god damned thing except grandstanding and theatre.

I think, but I'm not at all certain, that the problem here is that there's some jurisdictions where anyone could report anyone else who is involved in an abortion, and get a bounty. So, it's not just the police; anyone who can get their hands on your data could report you, and has a strong incentive to doing so. If the police gets involved, they can still get the data, obviously, but keeping data private would make it much less likely for the police to get involved in the first place.

> I would think this would run afoul of interstate commerce rules.

I agree, but if a hostile state gets to know you're a target, they can make your life hell in myriad ways, starting from forcing you to go all the way to the Supreme Court before their bullshit gets finally declared to be bullshit. And there's always a chance that it turns out that it doesn't conflict with federal law, for whatever reason only lawyers can understand, or simply because a couple top-tier judges just decide they hate abortion more than they love the rule of law. I mean, even just letting the general public know you've had an out-of-state abortion can be a crippling blow. It's much better if they just don't get to know you're a target.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "could be used to track and prosecute women across the US"

>but can't the cops simply walk in to any telco with a court order to hand over this data?

Florida cops walk into Google's California data center and demand data. Google and the Californian courts laugh at them (while scrolling the Floridians search history)

Florida cops have a deal with Blackwater-WagnerGroup data inc for security data services - who buy the data from Google.

[Richard Jones 1]

I Wonder What The Fuddy Duddies Really Want?

Just send all the unwanted, undesired or unaffordable offspring to your nearest Supreme Court, aka Court of your Inferiors, injustice or nearest Republican fool, to raise them until they are gaol age.

One side effect of Roe vs Wade was said to be a reduction in criminals being produced, and hence gaol populations. Be careful what you force on the unwary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I Wonder What The Fuddy Duddies Really Want?

Well if they were Democrats then obviously they would be harvesting babies to fill their Epi-pens.

But since it's Republicans and since they take all their other economic lessons from Swift - I assume the local steakhouse has a new meaning of Baby Back Ribs.

[Boris the Cockroach]

The

republickons dont care about abortion they really do not care if a woman has an abortion or not , they dont care whether the mother may die from a backstreet coathanger or any babies born may live out their live in poverty in a crime ridden slum (Mississippi recently enacted a law restricting medicare to 8 weeks after a baby is born.... god help you if your baby is premature or you need 12 weeks care to recover from a bad birth)

The reason they are doing this is to trigger all the anti- abortion nuts to vote for them, thats what they care about. it plays nicely with the religious right with the puritian outlook (and their 3rd marriage).

Still it will add to the fun of miscarriage, woman dissappears for a few days, comes home not pregnant, neighbours shop her in for having an abortion and win $10 000 and the woman goes to jail. win win all round

Are we in 1984 or the handmaid's tale? I'm not sure anymore

[Version 1.0]

Re: The

The Republicans are saying that they all support the "Pro-Life Community" but they are keen on keeping the Death Penalty going even though there are a horrifying number of executed people with virtually no real evidence that they committed any crime before they were executed.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: The

Holding aside for the moment all questions of moral and legal issues around abortion, I have to point out that while the Republican Party has traditionally made revoking reproductive rights a plank of their platform, in this particular circumstance it is several justices of the US Supreme Court who are looking to revoke the Constitutional protection of it.¹ Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected, so they can't be doing this so conservative voters will "vote for them".

Now if you claimed, say, that Trump's handlers had him appoint justices who would favor reversing Roe in order to encourage the Republican base to turn out at election time ... well, that's at least possible. Though historically outrage has been more successful than satisfaction at getting people to the polls. I think it's more likely that said handlers got Neil, Brett, and Amy their robes because they seemed likely to favor other policies nearer and dearer to what passes for said handlers' hearts. Abortion they likely don't give a damn about one way or the other.

The people who have a hand in SCOTUS appointments mostly aren't ideologues, or if they are, they're Randists or the like. They're elites. They're not like the sort of mid-level rabble who fill the House of Reps.

¹Before some idiot complains that "the Constitution doesn't mention abortion" or the like: Roe v. Wade construed a right to abortion in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth is a part of the Constitution, and the decision made that right as a part of Constitutional law. That's how SCOTUS decisions work.

[Richard 12]

Re: The

SCOTUS is highly political, and always has been.

The people who appoint judges to the SCOTUS are the people who fill the Senate and the House of Reps. That is literally how it works.

The only reason for the current makeup is because the Republican party refused to confirm any justices during the last year of the Obama administration as it was "too close to an election", then rushed one through after the polls had opened in 2020.

It's pretty clear that this was the plan. The intent. The whole damn point.

There's also several things that should be getting three or four of them impeached, but won't because they are political appointments.

Several of these justices specifically stated that Roe vs Wade was "settled" during their confirmation hearings. If the leaked draft is true, that looks very much like perjury.

At least one of the justices keeps inexplicably refusing to recuse himself when ruling on matters directly related to his own wife's activities.

Note that Roe vs Wade is also the bedrock of a lot of the rights of US citizens. It's not only about abortion.

[Mike 137]

Sale or use?

It's interesting that in the US such data protection legislation as there is generally addresses sharing (e.g. via sale), and it appears that the UK is drifting in that direction as well. However it's perfectly possible to abuse the rights of data subjects without sharing their data - you just carry out the abuse yourself.

[jmch]

Different issues squished together

There seems to be a lot of confusing issue-conflation here...

1) Medical data should not be made available to anyone beyond whom it was given to without the users explicit consent, and anyone the user consents to give their medical data to should be using this only for the expressed purpose. This should be a given, and should be independent of any potential abortion blackmail.

2) Location data should not be made available to anyone beyond whom it was given to without the users explicit consent, and anyone the user consents to give their location data to should be using this only for the expressed purpose. This should be a given, and should be independent of any potential abortion blackmail.

3) 1 and 2 notwithstanding, in practice location data is already available through telcos cell-tower records and can be accessed by cops/feds who have a warrant (and many times even by those who simply ask nicely). So this legislation is needed for 1 and 2 without having to pontificate about abortion rights.

With respect to the abortion rights itself, this is a giant minefield. My view is that a woman should be the ultimate decision-maker, but there needs to be a sensible cut-off date that is late enough for a woman to have enough time to make an informed decision, but early enough that the abortion is not in effect killing a human being. There is no real solid line of where such a cut-off would be simply because there is no scientific or objective measure, but for me that line would be around the 6-month mark when a prematurely-born baby could survive. A complete ban is just religion-induced nonsense. The "snitch bounty" part is just plain nastiness added on top out of pure spite - rejoicing in other's misery just to score political points and get your supporters to get paid for it to boot... Wow! That is even beyond plain nasty, it is truly evil.

Also, shout out to the other commenter who mentioned miscarriages - Miscarriages are FAR more common than anyone not involved would ever know. AFAIK about 1 in 3 women who have ever gotten pregnant have had a miscarriage. Mostly this happens very early (in some cases so early that the woman doesn't know she was pregnant and it feels more like a late and particularly painful period), as the body naturally recognises something is going wrong with the pregnancy, but it can also happen all through the pregnancy cycle. A miscarriage is traumatic enough, both physically and emotionally, to the mother without having some busybody neighbour dragging you through months or years of legal proceedings.

[Richard 12]

Re: Different issues squished together

The risk also rises very rapidly with age.

IIRC, it's around 15% in under 30, rising to around 40-50% by age 40.

That's only among women who actually know they're pregnant, of course so the actual rate is higher.

6 weeks is also a horrific joke. Especially as pregnancy is measured from your period, not from conception.

You are not in fact pregnant during the first one to two weeks of "pregnancy" - conception has not happened. Many pregnancy tests won't even show positive until 4-5 weeks (that's when the "96%+" accuracy claim is based). The accuracy is less than 50% a mere 4 days before the "expected day of period".

One week. One week to not only decide, but to find a doctor and act.

If you're lucky, because around 25% of women have irregular periods.

This is abuse, pure and simple. It is blatantly about controlling women's bodies.

[Brad16800]

What gets me is they're all for protecting unborn foetuses but once that becomes a child they're all about gun rights which end up with mass school shootings.

I really don't get the logic behind it.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Simple enough, people should not be killed until they.commit a crime. Once a crime is committed, then they can be tried and executed. And we don't blame inanimate objects for the actions of violent people, nor do we seek to punish people who commited no crime. In other words, the unborn are not criminals and should not be executed like they are.

Our gun rights are a final check on our government's power. If you recall our history, the people who wrote the Constitution had just finished fighting a war against an island that tried to disarm us. They weren't about to leave their children at the mercy of an overbearing government. I shudder to think what evils the Democrats would foist on our nation if we were disarmed. In our eyes, you are either an armed citizen or a diaarmed subject, and we didn't kick one king out just to be subjected to another one.

[genghis_uk]

Constitutional Revisionism

If you really want to quote history, the Supremes just used a modified reading of the 1787 constitution to change gun laws in New York - however, at that time abortion was legal until 'quickening' i.e. the baby was moving so they had to find another 'historic' reason.

To overturn Roe, they used precedent from the 1860's (when the 14th amendment was ratified), rather than from the time of the original constitution. By this time many states had made abortion illegal but it is likely that these laws were technically unconstitutional when looked at from the 1780's viewpoint.

Basically, they started at the result and looked back to find something that worked and then said it was constitutional originalism.

Back to guns, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

There never was a right to bear arms unless as part of an organised militia who were really a community protection group. Interestingly, James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, tried to introduce State legislation in Virginia that would impose penalties on any individual who “bear[s] a gun out of his inclosed ground, unless whilst performing military duty.” So the author of the 2nd amendment tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to implement a law similar to the one the Supremes just struck down - the intent though is clear that guns could be legislated at a State level and were not for individual protection... Note: the law was not passed but not because it went against the newly minted constitution. State authorities regularly confiscated guns in the late 18th century if someone was deemed unsafe or disloyal to the republic - no loyalty, no militia service, no gun... there was no right to bear arms back then it has been invented since and history has been largely ignored to do so!

[M.V. Lipvig]

With any luck

someone will remove "health location" from the final bill that actually passes, and we'll get a ban in the sale of any personal data, period.