A judge ordered Planned Parenthood to hand records of transgender care over to Andrew Bailey.

A St. Louis judge has ruled that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is entitled to Planned Parenthood’s transgender care records, ordering the nonprofit to turn over some of its most sensitive files to the man who has built his unelected political career on restricting health care access for trans people.

In his Thursday decision, Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer wrote that Bailey can collect documents under Missouri’s consumer protection statute that aren’t protected under federal mandate, namely the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA.

“It is clear from the statute that the Defendant has the broad investigative powers when the consumer is in possible need of protection and there is no dispute in this matter,” wrote Stelzer. “Therefore, the Defendant is entitled to some of the requested documents within his [Civil Investigative Demand].”

Bailey, who last year attempted to implement a ban on gender-affirming care for people of all ages, was quick to celebrate the decision, calling it a “big day” for the state.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    17 months ago

    Fair enough, I appreciate the well articulated response and agree with your usage, but you said it right here:

    I knew that would be the one thing someone would comment on

    That’s the unfortunate state of things due to years of people using the word derogatorily. I applaud you trying to bring it back to proper usage, just be prepared that you will continue to get responses like mine and I doubt they’ll all be as considered as this was.

    • @Adalast
      link
      37 months ago

      Thank you for your response anf kind acceptance.

      It is actually a word that I have been endlessly frustrated with the changes socially to its use. When actually discussing mental deficiencies in a medical sense, the phrase “mentally retarded” is a rare apt terminology. It is “the state if being inhibited from further mental or cognitive progress”, which fits the definition of the verb “retard” perfectly. I understand that socially it was widely used abusively and historically it has a dubious past medically at best, but linguistically it is perfect. I guess that is what frustrates me, because so few things in this world have such a linguistic, well, not perfection, but something to that effect. I guess my failure in words goes to rhetorically illustrate my point.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      07 months ago

      This attitude doesn’t really remove derogatory language, because idiots who want to be offensive just jump to stupid, new words, or else they turn words that we could previously use just fine into slurs.