States should scale back abortion reporting demands, advocacy group says

States should stop requiring health providers to file reports on every abortion because the information poses a risk to both them and their patients in the current political environment, a research group that advocates for abortion access says.
The Guttmacher Institute says in a new recommendation that the benefit of mandated and detailed data collection is no longer worth the downsides: It could reveal personal information, be stigmatizing for patients and cumbersome for providers — or could be used in investigations.
“It would be a mistake for anyone to assume now that the information a state could collect about abortion would not be used to harm people,” said Kelly Baden, Guttmacher’s vice president for public policy.