WASHINGTON D.C. – Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) has introduced H.R. 632, the Ensuring Accurate and Complete Abortion Data Reporting Act of 2023. This bill would incentivize states to report abortion data to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in order to receive targeted Medicaid funding for family planning programs.
Currently, states are not required to provide abortion statistics to the CDC, which results in incomplete data regarding abortions and survivors of abortion attempts. There is presently not a reliable single point of abortion data for all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
The American taxpayer continues to fund family planning programs despite having little understanding of how effective those programs are at reducing the number of abortions throughout the country. If all states were to submit accurate abortion data to the CDC, lawmakers would be better informed on family planning policy decisions and Medicaid funding for those programs could be more suitably allocated.
“Because reporting abortion data is voluntary, the data collected severely underestimates the number of abortions taking place. The reality is tax dollars are blindly being allocated to family planning programs without a clear picture of efficiency,” said Rep. Ralph Norman. “As if that’s not enough of an issue, the purpose of any family planning program is to promote health and to provide assistance to parents managing the number and spacing of their children – proactively. If a pregnancy results in an abortion for convenience, legitimate family planning has failed in its objective.”
“Considering the life and death stakes in abortion, for both mother and preborn child, it’s callously reckless to fail to track what is happening during and after abortions,” said Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life Action.“Radical abortion extremists in the Biden Administration and in Congress push for more abortion while hiding the truth of how it harms mothers, not just children. At the very least, we need to know how abortion is impacting women in every state. When you consider the plans in California to expand their abortion business and that they never report data, we must ask, what is happening behind the closed doors of abortion vendors to those who go there.”