Sponsors (12)
Conditions certain Medicaid family-planning payments on states submitting standardized annual aggregate abortion data to CDC and establishes a national CDC abortion surveillance system.
The bill would produce more complete, standardized national abortion data and support better policymaking (with a phase-in and technical assistance) but does so by imposing reporting mandates that raise serious privacy risks, administrative costs, and federal-state compliance and funding consequences that could disrupt services for low-income women.
Public health officials, researchers, and the health system will get more complete, standardized national data on abortions (including gestational age, methods, and demographics), improving monitoring of reproductive-health trends and informing responses.
Policymakers and state health agencies will have comparable, public-facing data to improve policymaking and resource allocation for maternal, reproductive, and family-planning services.
States that submit the required abortion data retain federal Medicaid family-planning funding, preserving contraceptive and related services for Medicaid beneficiaries.
Patients (particularly women and people in small or rural counties) face heightened privacy and reidentification risks from collecting detailed, cross-tabulated abortion and demographic data.
State health departments, Medicaid agencies, and providers will incur substantial administrative costs and reporting burdens to collect, certify, and transmit new data elements, and CDC/state resource needs may divert funds from other programs.
States that fail to submit timely or certified data risk temporary loss of federal Medicaid family-planning payments (including for a full fiscal year if CDC finds intentional falsification), potentially disrupting access to contraceptive and related services for low-income women.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Official title: Amend title XIX of the Social Security Act and the 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 Joni Ernst · Last progress January 22, 2025
Requires states to submit standardized aggregate abortion data to the CDC and ties state eligibility for certain Medicaid family-planning payments to timely, certified reporting. Creates a national CDC abortion surveillance system with a required worksheet of mandatory and optional questions, mandates annual CDC reports, allows technical assistance, and penalizes knowingly false state submissions by pausing eligibility for the affected federal payments.