Arizona Governor Urges the State to Stop Collecting Abortion Data, Citing Patient Privacy
Source: US News and World Report/AP
Dec. 18, 2024, at 5:40 p.m.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is calling for legislators to repeal the state law that requires an annual abortion report, saying that it infringes on patients' privacy, which echoes other Democratic officials' push to reduce or eliminate such requirements.
“The government has no place in surveilling Arizonans’ medical decision-making or tracking their health history,” Hobbs, a Democrat in a state where Republicans control the Legislature, said in a statement Wednesday as the state released its report covering 2023. “Starting a family is a sensitive and personal experience for a woman and her loved ones; there should be no room for government surveillance and publication of that decision.”
Hobbs is not the only one concerned about the collection of abortion data, especially as Donald Trump prepares to take over as president again, when he could implement policies that are hostile, or at least less favorable, to abortion rights. “It’s really worth thinking carefully about the risk and the benefit of collecting data in this new environment,” said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights and does its own voluntary surveys of abortion providers.
A handful of Democratic-controlled states have reduced reporting requirements in recent years out of concern about privacy and also considering the burden it puts on providers to collect it all. Republican-run states generally ask for a lot, though many of them have banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy or after roughly the first six weeks, before many people know they're pregnant.
Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2024-12-18/arizona-governor-urges-the-state-to-stop-collecting-abortion-data-citing-patient-privacy
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