Sponsors (8)
The bill improves the completeness, standardization, and usefulness of national abortion data for public‑health planning but does so by expanding collection and centralization of sensitive information and tying Medicaid payments to reporting—creating significant privacy, administrative, and funding‑risk trade‑offs for states and patients.
Public-health researchers, state and federal health agencies, and clinicians would have more complete and higher-quality abortion statistics because the bill standardizes reporting requirements and requires state certification of data accuracy.
Women, public-health planners, and state health departments would gain access to detailed cross‑tabulated abortion data (e.g., age by gestational age, race/ethnicity, county), enabling targeted public‑health interventions and more informed maternal health policy.
States would receive technical assistance to improve data quality and reporting consistency, helping smaller or under-resourced health departments meet new standards.
Women and Medicaid beneficiaries would face increased privacy and confidentiality risks because the bill expands collection and centralization of sensitive abortion data, including detailed, cross‑tabulated variables that could increase re‑identification risk if de‑identification and safeguards are imperfect.
Medicaid beneficiaries and low‑income individuals could lose access to family planning services if states fail to submit required data or are found to have falsified data and subsequently lose federal Medicaid reimbursement for a fiscal year, risking service cuts.
State health departments and health care providers would incur administrative burdens and costs to collect, standardize, certify, and report the expanded set of variables, straining budgets and staff capacity, especially in smaller or under‑resourced jurisdictions.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Conditions federal Medicaid family-planning payments on states' timely submission of standardized abortion data and directs CDC to run a required national abortion surveillance system.
Conditions federal Medicaid family-planning payments on states submitting annual, standardized abortion data to the CDC and requires the CDC to run a national abortion surveillance system that collects specified aggregate variables and cross-tabulations. States must certify data accuracy, meet defined deadlines for submission (with a one-year late window that preserves payment), and face loss of certain family-planning Medicaid payments if they knowingly provide false information.
Introduced January 22, 2025 by Ralph Norman · Last progress January 22, 2025