Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has released a statement regarding a recent comment letter he and 18 other state attorneys general signed opposing a new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule regarding abortions.
In April, the HHS proposed a modification to the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (“Privacy Rule”) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The HHS’ proposed rule would protect those who travel out of state to obtain abortions or gender-affirming care by shielding their medical records from investigations in their home state.
“In June, I joined eighteen other state AGs in opposing rulemaking by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I did so because the proposed rule is a hastily-assembled mess that is bad for Tennessee and bad for America,” Skrmetti said in a Friday statement. “Some confused commentators have equated my opposition to this rule with asserting a right to prosecute women who go out of state for abortions. This is simply not true: Tennessee’s abortion law does not apply to women who seek abortions, I have no enforcement authority with respect to Tennessee’s abortion law, and I am the attorney general of Tennessee and not some other state.”
“The proposed rule illegally exceeds the scope of HHS’s statutory authority. Major changes to the law require legislation, not bureaucratic decrees,” Skrmetti continued. “Further, the proposed rule unconstitutionally interferes with state enforcement of state laws. The proposed rule plays politics with healthcare data privacy at the expense of consistency and coherence.”
“We get it: the administration does not like any limits on abortion. But the Constitution gives states, not the federal government, the authority to regulate abortion. Members of the administration are free to engage in persuasion and politicking on their own time to try to change state laws. They cannot abuse the powers of the federal government to usurp the lawful authority of the people of the states. We have enough problems to address at the federal level without illegitimately dragging state-level problems into the mix,” Skrmetti added.
“The proposed rule is bad for Tennessee and bad for America, and I will continue to oppose it,” Skrmetti concluded.
Skrmetti was referencing a comment letter he and 18 other state attorneys general sent to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra last month. The letter, led by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, argued that the HHS’ proposed rule is part of the Biden Administration’s “false narrative that States are seeking to treat pregnant women as criminals or punish medical personnel who provide lifesaving care.”
The attorneys general further argued that the proposed rule is a “solution in search of a problem.”
In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee signed a bill earlier this year allowing physicians to perform abortions in specific life-threatening circumstances in the state, amending the previous law that had no exceptions, as previously reported by The Tennessee Star.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
The HHS is an unconstitutional agency so anything that comes from them is also unconstitutional. Same goes for FDA, CDC and NIH. Time we start shutting down these unconstitutional agencies and bring the rightful authority for health, education and environment back to the states. Time for a little nullification in Tennessee. Join us at: tncss.substack.com and our website tncss.weebly.com. Tennessee is going to put some teeth into the Tenth.