From today’s MUG:

The Justice Department is demanding patient records from, among other hospitals, Columbia-Presbyterian, Cornell, and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt, for hundreds of women who have had abortions in those hospitals since last November. Since the passage of the so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Justice Department wants to know more about what abortions are being performed and why.

But your medical records are confidential, right?

According to yesterday’s front-page story in the Times, Justice Department attorney Sheila M. Gowan argued before Judge Richard Conway Casey (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York) that “Individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential.”

What the fuck? Were we out of the country the day that happened? We’re not going to make even a stab at privacy any more? Called it off one day, did we? Game over?