NYT (free registration required) has a front page story about the Justice Dept. seeking abortion records that illustrates that oft cited danger of constitutional law.
The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.
Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what opponents call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, enacted last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions.
Now, I'm sure there are more than a few very well intentioned folks who viewed this procedure as barbaric (although I invite you to witness almost any surgery, it's generally pretty gruesome) but had no idea at the time the Justice Dept. would be poking around in millions of individuals medical records, not investigating a reported crime, but simply looking to see if one was committed. Coming on the heels of the Drake University anti-war subpoena, this story illustrates the extreme threat to individual privacy embodied by the Bush administration.
The moral of the story for me is that all legislation has a potential dark side, and that the government really has no business legislating in certain areas at the technical level, medicine being one of these, education, quite frankly, being another. So next time you hear someone warning about a slippery slope, think about this before you dismiss them as a tin-foil wearing alarmist.