Sponsors (14)
The bill improves visibility into pregnancy care in custody and creates strong fiscal incentives for states to report and address disparities, but it imposes administrative costs, privacy risks, and redistributes federal funds in ways that could strain some local programs.
State and local governments face a real financial incentive — losing up to 10% of certain DOJ grant funds — to submit the required pregnancy-in-custody reporting, increasing compliance pressure and likely improving statewide data quality.
Pregnant incarcerated people will have pregnancy care and outcomes tracked quarterly, improving visibility into prenatal and postpartum care gaps and enabling monitoring of care quality while in custody.
Public aggregated reports and a DOJ study will inform policymakers and the public, helping identify harmful custody practices (e.g., unnecessary restraints or restrictive housing) and support reforms to reduce such practices.
State and local agencies will incur additional administrative costs and staff time to collect, aggregate, and submit detailed quarterly data, creating new ongoing budget and staffing burdens.
Withholding and reallocating DOJ funds from noncompliant States to compliant ones could reduce resources for public safety and related programs in affected communities, shifting funding away from vulnerable localities.
Even though reports are aggregated and anonymized, detailed public data about small facilities or rare events could risk re-identification of individuals (particularly in small or rural facilities), posing privacy concerns for incarcerated pregnant people.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Introduced October 31, 2025 by Frederica Wilson · Last progress October 31, 2025
Requires states that receive certain federal criminal justice grant funds to submit quarterly, anonymized, aggregate data to the Attorney General about people who were pregnant or gave birth while detained in any state or local correctional facility. The reports must include counts, race/ethnicity, timing of admission and release/outcome, pregnancy testing and prenatal care timing, pregnancy outcomes and location, use-of-restraints details, postpartum screening and care, and restrictive housing information. States get 120 days to start reporting (with one possible 120-day extension); the Attorney General may withhold up to 10% of specified grant funds from noncompliant states and reallocate withheld funds to compliant states. The Attorney General will publish the reports, study the data (including links between adverse pregnancy outcomes and facility actions), and report findings to Congress within two years.