Sigh.
Collecting data on abortions is important and should be part of the CDCs role. However, Dr. Schwartz reasoning for abortion surveillance is disappointing and frustrating:
“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.
Most hospital's legal team already seem to panic when edge cases happen, this is just going to make it worse. Even best case scenario, I suspect a chilling effect with this statement.
Link to article: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trumps-new-cdc-head-said-abortion-surveillance-will-be-a-critical-focus_n_6a74a3f9e4b04fcbf74d8720?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=us_main