Judge orders University of Michigan to turn over abortion records.

2004 APR 1 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A U.S. federal judge on March 12, 2004, ordered the University of Michigan Health System to turn over redacted abortion records for possible inclusion in a court case over a law banning certain late-term abortions.

All identifying information is to be removed from the records, and lawyers for the university said they were satisfied patients' privacy will be safeguarded.

The records will be turned over to a federal judge in New York, who will determine whether they can be used in a case over the Partial-Birth Abortion Act. The law was passed by Congress last year but blocked by courts after abortion-rights advocates sued.

Justice Department officials say the abortion records are central to the claims by the law's challengers, including a University of Michigan doctor, that the banned procedure is medically necessary. The university had argued that turning over records of abortions performed by its health system would violate patients' privacy.

The banned procedure is referred to by critics as "partial-birth abortion" and by medical organizations as "intact dilation and extraction." In these late-term abortions, a fetus' legs and torso are pulled from the uterus and its skull is punctured.

Lawyers for the university and the Justice Department were in U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn's chambers for 90 minutes Friday afternoon. The university's general counsel, Ed Goldman, said they worked out privacy protections after Cohn told them he had no choice but to compel the university to comply with the subpoena.

Cohn said he had little choice because of his limited role in the New York case, but other judges have ruled differently. A federal district judge in Chicago has blocked the release of the ...