cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/64729688

Dr. Erica Schwartz, who on Wednesday became the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made some alarming comments about abortion care during her confirmation hearings and signaled a potential increased surveillance of abortion patients.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked Schwartz if she would commit to collecting better data on abortions, pointing to the CDC’s annual report of how many abortions are done each year in the U.S. The data program is voluntary, meaning some states like California, Maryland and New Jersey choose to not report annual abortion numbers to the federal agency. However, 44 states currently have some form of required reporting system for abortion care.

“Abortion surveillance is absolutely a critical component of what the CDC is currently doing,” Schwartz responded.

“I also want to make sure that certain states are not conflating emergency services and hiding abortions in that emergency services case definition,” she added. “We need to make sure we’re pulling out true abortions and making sure that we’re really having clear case definitions regarding abortions so the data is actually accurate.”

There is no evidence that states are purposefully misclassifying abortion care when reporting statistics to the CDC. The implication that certain states are hiding abortion services behind the label of emergency care services is particularly egregious given that many women have died or nearly died after physicians denied them miscarriage care due to state-level abortion bans.