The high court’s June decision in favor of Texas abortion providers is expected to have a chilling effect on state abortion restrictions. Anti-abortion advocates seek fresh ammunition to justify restrictions A key group is pushing for a national database of abortion statistics following a Supreme Court loss.

Seeking to arm themselves with new ammunition after losing a major Supreme Court battle, the anti-abortion movement is calling for a national database for abortion statistics and increased state reporting — moves likely to raise patient privacy concerns.

The high court’s June decision in favor of Texas abortion providers in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt is expected to have a chilling effect on state abortion restrictions, which had closed clinics in Texas and other parts of the country.


In response to the high court’s decision, which leaned heavily on research studies and statistics finding abortion to be overwhelmingly a safe procedure, Americans United for Life — one of the key groups advocating for tougher abortion restrictions — is looking to increase abortion reporting requirements as a way to justify new limits. The focus on evidence is part of the anti-abortion movement’s response to the Supreme Court ruling and an attempt to ensure they can pass new state legislation to restrict abortion in the future.

“The abortion advocates like to talk in vague terms about abortion but we need specifics,” said Clarke Forsythe, acting president of Americans United for Life. “We don’t have a national abortion data collection and reporting law.”

Denise M. Burke, vice president of legal affairs at Americans United for Life, called the court’s ruling “guidance for pro-life efforts” to justify proposed new regulations.

“The court asked for more evidence of the harms of abortion and pro-life advocates will answer the challenge,” she wrote in the American Thinker.

In recent years, anti-abortion groups have pushed states to release more data about the procedure, including statistics on patients’ ages, the gestational age of aborted fetuses and complication rates and details. Most of those have been rebuffed. In 2013, for instance, an anti-abortion activist sued Washington State to force the release of data on the number of abortions done by specific clinics and the ages of their patients. But the courts blocked that effort after Planned Parenthood and other abortions rights supporters raised patients’ privacy concerns.

“Americans United for Life is an organization with the express purpose of ending women's access to abortion,” said Mary Alice Carter, interim vice president at Planned Parenthood. “Not only are they clearly acting without concern for women's health or well-being, but a proposal like this could raise serious privacy and intimidation concerns for doctors and for women."

The two sources of national abortion statistics — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Guttmacher Institute, a private, pro-abortion rights research group — rely on information that health providers share on a voluntary basis, but many states have significant penalties for not complying with the CDC. Both sets of data are widely used by both sides of the abortion debate.

The CDC monitors abortion-related deaths, which are very rare, but not other complications. Opponents of abortion rights argue that complications are higher than what current data show.

Others dispute that, saying that abortion is a widely studied medical procedure and peer-reviewed studies have shown low complication rates for years. Abortion rights supporters often say that an abortion in early pregnancy is technically safer than carrying a child to term.

“There’s already a lot of data that have been published documenting how safe abortion is in the U.S.,” said Daniel Grossman, a physician at the University of California San Francisco who studied abortion access after Texas implemented its restrictions in 2013. “The abortion complication rate is exceedingly low.”

Americans United for Life’s effort is in its early stages. But the group will push Congress to pass a bill requiring physicians to report abortion rates and complications. And they’d like states to enact or improve their reporting requirements.

Leaders acknowledge a federal law is unlikely to be signed into law by Hillary Clinton, if she is elected president. But the idea is gaining traction in states with traditionally strong anti-abortion laws, including Texas.

“In the future, we’re going to need better data,” said Texas Alliance for Life Executive Director Joe Pojman, who acknowledged groups like his are likely to have a hard time pursuing new restrictions without statistics supporting their safety concerns.

Texas — which started tracking complications in 2013 — has released 2014 statistics showing complications related to abortion are exceedingly rare. But Pojman argues the numbers “are much smaller than what one would expect.” The group plans to urge state lawmakers address the issue of how clinics report data, which he contends is inadequate.

The state’s data, he said, “defies common sense.”

Grossman disputes that assertion, saying “there’s no sign that there’s a hidden safety problem happening in Texas.”

But demanding more extensive reporting requirements is only one part of the anti-abortion movement’s strategy for 2017.

Overall, the focus is expected to shift from regulating clinics to protecting the fetus — including proposed bans on fetal research and on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Anti-abortion advocates also want to replicate an Indiana law, which generated a huge public outcry and has been temporarily blocked by the courts, that requires abortion clinics to bury or cremate the remains after an abortion.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Texas case “may slow down pro-life legislation, but it will not stop it,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “Pro-life legislation which reaches to the heart of the matter — the child — is popular among every demographic group.”

State legislation will continue to be a key focus. For about a decade, with the Supreme Court makeup unlikely to reverse Roe, anti-abortion groups have focused on enacting abortion restrictions at the state level. And they’ve had remarkable success, enacting more than 300 since 2011, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

“We’ve been passing pro-life laws in state after state after state, for year after year after year,” National Right to Life Committee President Carol Tobias said at the group’s annual meeting last month. Of the abortion rights movement, she said, “And they think they’re going to waltz in and just repeal them? They don’t have the people. They don’t have the popular support.”

Bans on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy have already been approved by 15 states — although some have been blocked by the courts — and are likely to spread.

The Pennsylvania state Senate is considering a 20-week abortion ban, as well as a prohibition on a second-trimester abortion procedure — although the Democratic governor has threatened to veto it. In Ohio, anti-abortion groups hope to send a 20-week abortion ban bill to Gov. John Kasich before the end of the year.

In Wisconsin, Wisconsin Right to Life Executive Director Heather Weininger said the group’s top priorities are to enact a prohibition on a second-trimester abortion procedure and on fetal tissue research, which stalled in the state legislature earlier this year.

Indiana has already passed a law that requires the fetal remains after an abortion to be cremated — and a similar bill is pending in the Ohio state Legislature. Just days after the Supreme Court decision, Texas health officials issued new regulations requiring fetal tissue to be buried or cremated.

“We are hoping these rules get adopted and passed into statute next session,” Pojman said. The Center for Reproductive Rights says the regulation violates the Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health because there is no medical benefit and has threatened to sue.

Texas Alliance for Life wants action on other issues, too, such as addressing possible human trafficking when women are brought to abortion clinics and preventing universities from conducting research using fetal tissue.

“We definitely have to be very cautious because the federal courts are hostile to state regulations,” Pojman said. “That is the new reality.”