Sponsors (10)
Introduced January 22, 2025 by Joni Ernst · Last progress January 22, 2025
The bill improves national abortion surveillance and policymaking through standardized reporting and support for states, but raises significant privacy risks and administrative/funding burdens that could disrupt services and spur federal–state disputes.
Public health officials, researchers, and women: mandatory, standardized CDC abortion reporting will create a more complete national dataset that improves monitoring of abortion trends, access, and outcomes.
State governments, hospitals, and policymakers: comparable, standardized state-level data and annual public reports will enable better policymaking and more targeted resource allocation for maternal and reproductive health services.
State Medicaid agencies and low-income patients: states that submit the required abortion data retain federal Medicaid family-planning payments, helping preserve funding for contraceptive and related services.
Women and patients (especially in small counties): collecting detailed demographic and cross-tabulated abortion data increases risks of privacy breaches and reidentification if data are not properly de-identified and secured.
State governments, Medicaid agencies, hospitals, and CDC: complying with enhanced, standardized reporting will impose administrative costs and burdens that could divert staff time and resources from other public-health programs.
Medicaid beneficiaries and low-income women: states that fail to submit timely or accurate data (or are found to have knowingly falsified data) risk losing federal Medicaid family-planning payments for a fiscal year, which could disrupt access to services.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Conditions Medicaid family-planning payments on states’ standardized annual submission of abortion data to CDC and requires CDC to run a national abortion surveillance system and report.
Requires states to submit standardized, annual abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and conditions certain Medicaid family-planning payments on that submission. Creates a federal abortion surveillance system at CDC with a required worksheet of mandatory data elements, deadlines for state reporting, certification requirements, and penalties for knowingly false reporting.