AB-1155/ SB-1119: SAFEGUARD Act

The Stopping Abuse, Fraud, and Exploitation by Governing Unauthorized Access to Reproductive Data (SAFEGUARD) Act gives patients the power to take back control of their private health information from deceptive organizations collecting medical data.

When a patient discloses private medical information at a hospital or at their physician’s office, they do so knowing it cannot be shared without their express consent. Federal laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) set strong national standards to ensure patient privacy is protected. HIPAA regulations generally do not extend to Unregulated Pregnancy Centers (UPCs).

UPCs, sometimes known as Crisis Pregnancy Centers or Pregnancy Resource Centers, are facilities that present themselves as health clinics or pregnancy resource centers but typically are not licensed medical providers and do not offer comprehensive reproductive health care.

While they often advertise services like pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, these services are frequently provided without medical oversight, and staff may not be trained clinicians. UPCs are not held to the same standards of care as licensed health clinics and commonly provide misleading or medically inaccurate information about pregnancy, contraception, and abortion.

When individuals unwittingly share private reproductive health information with UPC staff, that data could be shared widely, and even used to track and surveil patients without the knowledge that their privacy has been compromised.

The bill specifically requires UPCs to obtain express written permission. The UPC must also disclose, in plain language, that they are not a HIPAA covered entity for the purpose of federal privacy regulations. The bill also requires the UPC to disclose any data breach that exposes individual digital health information.