A bipartisan group of Alaska state legislators has penned a letter to the federal government in support of a rule aimed at preventing anti-abortion states from accessing out-of-state abortion records to prosecute patients and providers, a sharp rebuke of Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor’s support for that very practice.
The 14-member group, mostly made up of Democrats but includes independents and a Republican in Anchorage Sen. Cathy Giessel, pointed to the Alaska Constituiton’s right to privacy that was approved overwhelmingly by voters in 1972. The Alaska Supreme Court has regularly affirmed that the clause protects a person’s right to make health decisions, including the right to have an abortion.
“Alaskans amended our constitution decades ago to include the right to privacy, and we believe this right extends to individuals who choose to receive their health care in our state. Further, we believe any release of the medical information of Alaskans should remain part of an aggregate to protect the privacy rights of patients, in accordance with our constitution, and that individual information should continue to be protected.”
The right of the people to privacy is recognized and shall not be infringed.
Alaska Constitution Article I, Sec. 22
Late last month, Taylor signed onto a letter by the Mississippi attorney general and 17 other conservative attorneys general opposing a federal rule that seeks to protect abortion and additional health care information from states seeking to prosecute people for their health care decisions. Essentially, they argue in the letter that their laws criminalizing most abortions should be able to pierce the medical privacy law HIPAA.
While Taylor released an initial statement that the letter “spoke for itself,” the attorney general, who also quietly erased LGBTQ protections in Alaska before the 2022 election, said it was a state’s rights issue and about fighting federal overreach.
“This letter is about preserving state’s rights in the face of federal overreach, and that is why Alaska joined,” he said before whining about questions that asked if Alaska planned on giving such information to other states. “Some news organizations have bizarrely asked if the state plans to pursue information on these procedures in other states or seeks to provide this information to other states. The answer is an emphatic, ‘No.'”
Anchorage Republican Sen. Cathy Giessel, who is pro-life, told the Anchorage Daily News that she was “stunned” by Taylor’s decision and questioned where his priorities were because it certainly doesn’t seem they’re with supporting the Alaska Constitution. She said while she is personally opposed to abortion, she strongly believes in an individual’s right to privacy.
“Why is he engaging in other states’ business?” Giessel told the paper. “He’s in that role to be the attorney for Alaska’s citizens. … He’s acting more—it feels to me—like the attorney general for the people of other states or the administrations of other states.”
But driving this kind of fear into people’s minds is precisely what is so worrying about the attorney general’s letter, abortion advocates told The Alaska Current. They said they feared people might think twice about accessing critical health care services with people like Taylor running the state’s Department of Law.
“Having people fear having open and honest conversations with their providers because they’re afraid the government is going to use that information against them is the worst-case scenario,” Mack Smith, the communications manager at Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. “That is what the attorney general has signed his name to.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.