The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization, eliminating federal protection for abortion rights recognized since 1973 in Roe v Wade, will trigger the adoption and enforcement of numerous state laws banning or restricting abortion. The most pressing concerns for physicians and health care facilities are how to minimize these laws’ adverse effects on patients and provide quality reproductive health care within legal limits.1 Yet, another vital issue also merits attention: How can clinicians and facilities protect their patients—and themselves—from having reproductive health information used to incriminate them?

New abortion restrictions may clash with privacy protections for health information in 3 ways. And despite popular misconceptions about the breadth of the Privacy Rule of the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other information privacy laws, current federal law provides little protection against these scenarios.