Sponsors (8)
The bill improves public-health surveillance, research, and policymaking by creating standardized abortion data and preserves Medicaid funding for compliant states, while raising substantial privacy risks, administrative costs, and the potential for data to be used politically in ways that could harm reproductive rights.
Women, hospitals, researchers, and public-health officials will get more complete, standardized abortion data (including cross-tabulated variables) so disease surveillance, maternal health research, and targeted public-health interventions can improve.
State and federal policymakers will have comparable evidence to craft and evaluate reproductive health and safety policies across jurisdictions.
States that submit the required abortion data will retain full federal Medicaid matching for family-planning services, preserving federal funding that supports low-income beneficiaries.
Pregnant people and women face increased privacy and re-identification risks from more detailed and standardized abortion data (including residence, race/ethnicity, and multiple cross-tabs), which could expose sensitive health information.
States and health systems will incur administrative and IT costs to collect, standardize, update, and transmit the required data and to respond to CDC worksheet revisions, increasing state and taxpayer expenses.
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 or force state budget cuts affecting many low-income people.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Conditions Medicaid family-planning matching funds on states' annual submission of specified aggregate abortion data to CDC and creates a standardized CDC abortion surveillance system.
Introduced January 22, 2025 by Ralph Norman · Last progress January 22, 2025
Conditions federal Medicaid matching payments for family-planning services on states’ annual submission of standardized abortion data to the CDC and requires the Department of Health and Human Services, through the CDC Director, to maintain a standardized, aggregate abortion surveillance system and worksheet. States must submit a mandatory set of data items (age, gestational age, race/ethnicity, method, marital status, prior pregnancy history, residence, and whether the child survived the abortion), certify accuracy, and face loss of Medicaid family-planning matching funds if the CDC finds knowingly false reporting; the CDC must publish periodic reports and provide technical assistance to states.