Sponsors (8)
Conditions Medicaid family-planning matching payments on States' annual submission of standardized aggregate abortion data to the CDC and creates a CDC surveillance worksheet and reporting system.
Official title: To amend title XIX of the Social Security Act and Public Health Service Act to improve the reporting of abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 22, 2025 by Ralph Norman · Last progress January 22, 2025
The bill improves national abortion surveillance and helps preserve federal family‑planning funds for compliant states—strengthening public‑health research and policy—while creating meaningful privacy risks, administrative costs, and potential funding penalties that could harm low‑income beneficiaries and be politically misused.
Women, public-health agencies, and researchers get more complete, standardized abortion data (including cross‑tabulations) so surveillance, maternal‑health research, and targeted interventions can improve.
State and local policymakers receive comparable, standardized data (with CDC technical assistance) to craft evidence‑based reproductive‑health policies and program decisions across jurisdictions.
States that comply retain full federal Medicaid matching for family‑planning services and beneficiaries face fewer immediate funding interruptions because late submissions (by Dec. 31) still preserve payments.
Women (especially in small or marginalized communities) face increased privacy and re‑identification risks from detailed, standardized reporting (residence, race/ethnicity, cross‑tabs), which could chill reporting and care‑seeking.
States, local health departments, and health systems will incur recurring administrative and IT costs to expand, standardize, certify, and update reporting systems, diverting resources from service delivery and raising taxpayer costs.
States that fail or refuse to report accurate abortion data risk losing a full year of federal Medicaid matching funds for family‑planning, which could reduce services for Medicaid beneficiaries and low‑income people.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Requires States to submit standardized annual aggregate abortion data to the CDC and ties federal Medicaid family-planning matching payments to timely, accurate reporting. The CDC must operate a uniform surveillance worksheet with mandatory questions (age, gestational age, race/ethnicity, abortion method, prior pregnancy history, residence, child survival, etc.), provide technical assistance, and publish annual reports; States that knowingly submit false data risk losing Medicaid family-planning matching funds for one fiscal year.