A months-long investigation by the American Independent has uncovered that the Michigan Department of Community Health has been secretly collecting detailed demographic information for the people who take HIV tests at community clinics — a practice that has been going on for more than a decade, despite the fact that it raises serious privacy concerns about the way the state is handling sensitive health care information.

When Michigan residents get tested for HIV at a federally-funded community clinic, their information — including age, birth date, and potential “risk categories” for contracting the virus — is entered into a massive state database that stores it indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the test. The state-owned data could even include the identities of people who have sexual relationships with HIV-positive individuals. There’s no way for a Michigander to remove their information from the system once it has been entered.

The Department of Community Health says they simply want to track the number of tests conducted with federal grant money, and state officials claim that the database “does not contain personally identifiable information.” But outside investigations have found that there’s not enough security to safeguard the sensitive information, and anyone who works for the health department is able to access it. In fact, some of Michigan’s local health departments are using the database’s information to build criminal cases against HIV-positive individuals who they want to prosecute for failing to disclose their status — something that represents a potential breach of civil liberties:

“There are certainly privacy rights involved, particularly when clients are not being told that the information they are providing is being put in a database which can be utilized to assist with criminal prosecution of people living with HIV,” said Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan LGBT Project. “It’s ironic that in its effort to try to prevent transmission of HIV as part of the HIV-testing process, this policy and practice will likely discourage people from being tested, because they fear criminal prosecution for having knowledge of their HIV status.”

Rose Saxe, from the National ACLU AIDS Project, also weighed in on the issue. She said the state is collecting confidential health information, but also “deeply personal information.”

“The state has a constitutional obligation to keep this information secure, and to protect the privacy rights of people testing for HIV,” Saxe told TAI in an email. “Because of the sensitivity of this information, the ACLU believes it is critically important that the state have in place policies to ensure that this information is used appropriately. This includes safeguards to prevent inadvertent disclosure, and ways to ensure that it is only accessed for legitimate reasons by health department employees. If the state cannot or does not undertake steps to protect this deeply private information about people in Michigan, it has no business collecting and storing it indefinitely.”

Several studies have demonstrated that criminalizing HIV is not an effective policy to combat rates of infection. In fact, just as the ACLU’s Jay Kaplan points out, those type of punitive laws can actually dissuade people from learning their status because they’re worried about facing legal action. They also serve to reinforce the lingering stigma associated with the virus. Nevertheless, 34 states — including Michigan — have adopted criminal laws based on perceived exposure to HIV.

The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) has called for the repeal of criminalization laws across the country. Even if Michigan doesn’t throw out its HIV-specific criminal laws, it could take immediate steps to stop secretly collecting data to enforce those laws without its residents’ knowledge.

In May, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (R) signed a stringent 20-week abortion ban with no exception in cases of rape or incest. That law was scheduled to go into effect at the beginning of the new year — but thanks to a last-minute court ruling in the final days of 2012, women and doctors have been spared the harsh abortion restriction.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit to block the “fetal pain” law from taking effect, claiming that both doctors and women would suffer under the unnecessary restriction. Proponents of banning abortions after 20 weeks of gestation rely on the widely-disputed claim that fetuses can feel pain after that point, but the science doesn’t back them up. In reality, Georgia’s HB 954 is focused on preventing women from making their own decisions about when to terminate a pregnancy, as well as criminally prosecute the doctors who choose to provide their patients with the health care they need after the arbitrary cut-off. After hearing the ACLU’s arguments, Georgia Judge Doris Downs issued a temporary injunction to right before the Christmas holiday to block the law from taking effect this week.

Nevertheless, several other states — Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, and North Carolina — have enacted 20-week abortion bans, and Texas may consider one in the new legislative session.

But Georgia isn’t the only state to run into legal roadblocks as it attempts to scale back women’s access to abortion. The ACLU also won a temporary injunction against Arizona’s stringent ban — considered the worst restriction in the nation, since it redefines the gestational period to outlaw abortions even before 20 weeks of pregnancy — while it is considered in court. Depending on the courts’ decisions in Georgia and Arizona, the so-called “fetal pain” laws in other states could also be at risk.

2012 was a banner year for new abortion restrictions, as 19 states passed 42 different provisions to restrict women’s access to reproductive health services. Imposing limits on later term abortions was one of the most popular methods that anti-choice lawmakers used to threaten abortion rights last year.

Three doctors in Georgia are seeking to block their state’s restrictive abortion ban, which outlaws the procedure after 20 weeks of gestation except in very narrow cases of medical emergency.

Representing the doctors in an Atlanta court on Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that — in addition to preventing women from choosing when to terminate a pregnancy — the stringent law will force doctors to make an impossible choice because they could be criminally prosecuted for providing their patients with the health care they need:

“It is unconstitutional on its face,” ACLU attorney Alexa Kolbi-Molinas told the judge. “It is undisputed that plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm.” [...]

“The act, which bans nearly all pre-viability abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization, infringes on the fundamental right of a woman to decide whether and when to bear a child,” and breaches rights enshrined in Georgia’s constitution, the ACLU argued in a Nov. 30 complaint.

Georgia was the seventh state in the nation to enact a 20-week abortion ban. Such measures typically rely on the widely disputed claim that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks.

The ACLU has also taken legal action against a similar stringent 20-week abortion ban in Arizona, successfully blocking the measure from taking effect while a court considers the case against it. Arizona officials defended the restrictive legislation by claiming that medical issues that arise after 20 weeks of pregnancy are simply “the woman’s problem.”