Glad to see the right to privacy is so important!

[This is a response to Dahlia Lithwick's article on a Florida law limiting doctors' ability to ask patients about guns and put the matter in their charts. The selective concern police answered me here though someone generally conservative (though a doctor, I believe) added a word of reason.]

I am a bit unsure about where to go here. I'm all for "privacy" and respect the rights of firearm owners, so surely I think their privacy (such penumbras and emanations of the Second Amendment are of importance) important. But, I'm also for privacy respecting drug testing, abortion choices, medicinal marijuana, euthanasia choices and so forth and the people supporting this law seem less gung ho about such matters, though I'm sure some will find them copacetic.

Admittedly, I'm not sure how much "privacy" is protected in preventing doctors from asking their patients about matters relevant to the health and safety of their families and making relevant notations in their records. (Push comes to shove, free speech would make the law wrong even the doctor asked the question totally irrelevantly though I do not desire to settle every possible scenario here.) The information is private; it is discussed in the privacy of the doctor's office and the records are protected. I would understand if this was about releasing such information.

Justice Douglas, in a dissenting opinion foreshadowing his famous Griswold majority once noted:

Of course a physician can talk freely and fully with his patient without threat of retaliation by the State. The contrary thought - the one endorsed sub silentio by the courts below - has the cast of regimentation about it, a cast at war with the philosophy and presuppositions of this free society.

Such was a different age though and talking freely is a menace now. The law does not that there is an exception when "not relevant to the patient's medical care or safety, or the safety of others," which to the uninitiated seems to be an exception that eats the rule. But, this is apparently a misunderstanding based on the idea that gun possession is relevant to the safety of family members. The NRA, which professes to be quite concerned about such safety, particularly their safety course involving cute birds targeted to children, would one thinks disagree.

I am mistaken in my understanding conservatives and Tea Party types are necessary to pare back government regulation of the free market. If a doctor wishes not to take a patient who does not want to talk about something of this nature, it is clearly up to the nanny state to stop them. The free market, including Rand Paul type physicians, will not be satisfactory. Likewise, as Tea Party favorite Rand Paul (not as copacetic about his toilet choice) noted, we need to be careful about our freedom of speech. Dangerous speech is to be guarded against, including those who support sedition (other than "Second Amendment" remedies) and doctors asking questions.

Let me stop being coy. As a character noted in 1776 (a semi-fictional take on our Declaration of Independence) noted:

Well, in all my years I ain't never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about.

This includes some doctor daring even to ask such questions. It is appropriate to put forth neutral requirements that doctors provide truthful information, including basic requirements to inform patients of risks. Sometimes, such a requirement would require a doctor to say something s/he rather not, for whatever reason, so Douglas' dictum should be taken with a bit of salt. But, this is quite different from a law that censors them from asking perfectly acceptable questions, more akin to forced pro-life anti-abortion information required in some states. This law is if anything more moronic, except as a telling reflection of the times.

As implied by someone found in the answer linked on top, it is clearly ideological, "privacy" latched on to when convenient to the party in question.