Rachel Maddow used the Red State’s 19 AG decision to obtain the private medical records of women who receive out-of-state care to bust the lie that Republicans are the party of limited government.
maddow said:
It’s actually 19 different states where Republican officials are now heading towards this. 19 Republican attorneys general in 19 states have signed a letter to the Biden administration saying they want the right to search women’s private medical records anywhere in the country, including every state where abortion is legal. They want to follow their residents across the country to see if that woman could get an abortion or some other type of reproductive care anywhere.
They want the files and claim the right to get them. The Republican attorneys general in all of these states sent this letter to the Biden administration regarding their right as they see it to obtain your private medical records. And they mean it for women getting an abortion, fertility treatment, or any type of reproductive care. Possible birth control. Also gender-affirming care of any kind. They claim the right to take your medical records to see what you’re doing, no matter where you went to get it.
How can you walk away from something like this? If that’s what they say they want to do, and they are, how can you walk away from it? The reason they wrote to the Biden administration saying they are demanding that right is because the Biden administration says they shouldn’t have the right to do that. The Biden administration is trying to assert at the federal level that attorneys general in states where abortion is banned cannot follow their residents to other states to see if they are receiving banned care from somewhere where it is. is legal. Beyond these efforts to protect this at the federal level from the Biden administration, you started to see blue states. Places like New York and Washington State that have passed state laws saying no one should be able to get private medical records like this. Just because you’ve banned abortion in your state doesn’t mean you can effectively enforce it in mine. Here are 19 Republican states, 19 Republican state attorneys general who say they’re going. And maybe they already are.
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They used to say the Republican Party was the party of limited government. It’s a lot of things but that’s not it.
Video:
Republicans are no longer the party of limited government
You have to understand that what Republicans are doing doesn’t just impact women or trans people. The change in Republican philosophy is an abandonment of the notion of individual freedom in favor of great governmental control by the state.
During the Cold War, maybe that was the kind of story we told about communism and the USSR. Republicans of 20, 30, or 40 years ago would have been appalled by the use of state power to direct the lives of private citizens.
Since the founding of the republic, the danger of a crossing of lines by the state seizing individual freedoms has always been known and warned.
It starts with trans people, or maybe women seeking out-of-state reproductive care, but it won’t stop there. A loss of personal freedom and privacy for one is a loss for all.
Republicans are the party of big government authoritarianism.
It is the Democrats who are the party of individual liberty and freedom.
Jason is the editor. He is also a member of the White House press pool and a congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason holds a bachelor’s degree in political science. His graduate studies focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Political Science Association
