‘They Pick And Choose’: Biden Admin Faces Backlash For Publicizing COVID Vaccine Statuses While Ordering Abortion Privacy

• President Biden signed an executive order to help abortion seekers keep their health records private after requiring Americans to publicly disclose their COVID-19 vaccination status for months.
• “The irony is they pick and choose when to apply privacy and ‘my body, my choice’ in their policymaking,” Dr. Ben Carson, Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
• The Biden administration expressed concern over third party tech groups leaking women’s abortion records to law enforcement, suggesting the new executive order will allow abortion seekers to ‘protect’ themselves against discrimination, but the President’s previous executive order forced companies to nix unvaccinated employees.

President Biden is being criticized for protecting “patient privacy” regarding abortion after requiring Americans to display their COVID-19 vaccination status to their employers for months.

Biden signed an executive order on July 8, 2022, attempting to protect abortion rights post-Roe v. Wade. Part of this order takes measures to ensure women’s abortion records are kept private from outside groups and data collectors who could leak their information to local law enforcement. The goal is to prevent both abortion providers and receivers from being criminally prosecuted in states that are cracking down on the procedure. This comes after the President enacted an executive order requiring Americans to publicly display their COVID-19 vaccination status for months in order to keep their jobs.

“The President’s executive order takes additional steps to protect patient privacy, including by addressing the transfer and sales of sensitive health-related data, combatting digital surveillance related to reproductive health care services,” the White House stated on their website. “HHS (The Department of Health and Human Services) will consider additional actions, including under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), to better protect sensitive information related to reproductive health care.”

The White House added new guidance issued by the HHS Secretary, addressing how the HIPAA Privacy Rule protects women’s reproductive information.

“The guidance helps ensure doctors and other medical providers and health plans know that, with limited exceptions, they are not required – and in many cases, are not permitted – to disclose patients’ private information, including to law enforcement,” the HHS website read.

“Protecting the privacy and security of this information, including what doctors you visit and what medical treatments or services you receive, allows you to control who has access to information about you, how much access they have, and when they have access,” the website continued.

Some of President Biden’s critics believe his administration holds a double standard when it comes to abortion vs. vaccine privacy.

“It certainly is nice to see the Biden administration finally taking privacy rights seriously, if only for ginning up a make believe scenario of law enforcement tracking down women for obtaining an out of state abortion,” Dr. Ben Carson, Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The irony is they pick and choose when to apply privacy and “my body, my choice” in their policymaking,” he continued.

“When you selectively apply privacy on medical records, you violate the public’s trust and politicize public health,” Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We have to restore trust in our public institutions and a double standard is counterproductive,” he added.

When it came to vaccine information, HHS compiled a list of exceptions to the HIPAA Privacy Rule. It states the rule does not prohibit businesses, employers, restaurants, schools or entertainment venues from requiring individuals to show proof of vaccination.

Contrastingly, when discussing abortion privacy, the administration stated that President Biden’s new executive order on abortion allows individuals to “protect” themselves from “potential discrimination, identity theft, or harm to (their) reputation.”

Biden’s critics have previously called his federal vaccine mandates discriminatory, which prompted multiple lawsuits and ultimately led to the Supreme Court striking down his executive order demanding the vaccination of all Americans who work for companies with more than 100 employees. Some companies are currently being sued by employees alleging medical and religious discrimination for continuing their vaccine mandates after the Supreme Court’s ruling.”

There are currently no federal or state laws preventing U.S. companies from requiring their employees to download COVID tracking apps. During the pandemic, A number of colleges and universities mandating the COVID vaccine required students to permit apps to track their health information, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Some of these apps tracked students’ locations, The New York Post reported.

Under Biden’s new proposed changes to Title IX, all federally funded colleges must protect student’s seeking abortions and academically accommodate them, according to Inside Higher Ed.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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