The case of a Storm Lake infant found abandoned dead at a county recycling center in May demonstrates an opportunity for the Iowa Supreme Court to show the state’s prosecutors, and Buena Vista county’s in particular, that there must be a balance between the public’s desire to catch criminals and that same public’s right to privacy.

The baby, whose body was shredded before being found, was so mangled that investigators have not even been able to determine its gender or race. In an attempt to break the case open, they requested the records of every woman who tested pregnant at any Storm Lake clinic between August 2001 and May.

Some of the clinics honored the request, which was sanctioned by the county’s sheriff, prosecutors and a district judge, but Planned Parenthood has declined to release its records. Their appeal is on its way to the Iowa Supreme Court.

The problem with the prosecutorial fishing expedition is that medical records are private. Buena Vista County officials have argued that because the tests conducted at clinics like Planned Parenthood aren’t performed by doctors, there is no doctor-patient confidentiality.

Perhaps there is no absolute confidentiality right to records created by an interaction between a patient and a clinic worker without a medical degree. That seems like a possibly troublesome precedent to set, but there may be cases when such records should be open to a court’s review, given authorities have specific information leading them to request the records of a client for a specific reason. In this case, though, it is hard to follow the county’s line of logic.

There is no reason to believe that the woman who gave birth to the baby was even tested at any of these clinics. Pregnancy tests performed by family doctors or any other M.D. can not be subpoenaed. Many women use at-home tests, which would be impossible to trace.

How likely is it, anyway, that a woman who would abandon her child at a recycling center would go to the trouble of confirming her pregnancy or seeking pre-natal care? After all, if you’re going to abandon your child, it wouldn’t make sense to let everyone know you’re pregnant.

Buena Vista County wants to search the medical records of hundreds of innocent mothers and mothers-to-be without so much as a suspect, infringing on a privacy that most women certainly expected when they chose to visit Planned Parenthood or any other birth clinic for that matter.

The death of the Storm Lake baby was horrible. Authorities can and should do everything within their legal right to track down and prosecute the person responsible. But casting a dragnet across a set of medical records that are unlikely to even provide any good leads is foolish, irresponsible and incredibly intrusive.

Hopefully, the Iowa Supreme Court will decide not to make this case any more horrible than it already is.

Editorial Board: Dave Roepke, Erin Randolph, Charlie Weaver, Megan Hinds, Rachel Faber Machacha