Timely and accurate documentation should be a baseline expectation, whatever one’s view on abortion is.
There’s a pretty straightforward accountability story today: Four pro-life organizations are asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to release overdue abortion data — which includes information on maternal mortality. Currently, the most recent available information is from 2022 — and we are approaching 2027. The delay should be explained and remedied. This should not be merely of pro-life concern, but anyone who considers women’s health care a priority.
“We believe women should be provided with excellent healthcare, starting with accurate public health information,” stated the October 14 letter, addressed to Erica Schwartz, the current director of the CDC. “We are not asking the CDC to end using the WHO definition of MMR but instead recommend that the current MMR metric be used primarily as an international comparator.”
The letter is signed by John Mize of Americans United for Life (AUL); Christina Francis of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) and AAPLOG Action; Brick Lantz of Christian Medical & Dental Associations; and Greg Burke of the Catholic Medical Association.
The letter requests a meeting with CDC leadership; the publication of an annual dashboard documenting maternal-mortality measures, including death per live birth, total pregnancies, and outcomes by pregnancy. It asks for abortion reporting to include the provider and facility, the procedure or medication, drug-lot information, location, and relevant medical history. And it insists on the release of the delayed abortion-surveillance report that was expected to be completed during the last calendar year and released this past spring. That report was to cover abortions during 2023 — the calendar year after the Dobbs Supreme Court decision — so, an official government report on what abortion looked like after Roe v. Wade came to an end.
The coalition asks the CDC to not just measure maternal mortality by live births, but all pregnancies, giving a fuller picture of deaths associated with miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies, and abortion.
This is a drilling down beyond what the World Health Organization’s standard is. The letter asks that that measure remain for comparing countries, but that we expect more thorough domestic documentation to better distinguish the risks associated with different pregnancy outcomes.
Having updated, more specific information will make CDC data the standard — rather than abortion-industry Guttmacher Institute statistics — providing a better understanding of what’s going on in women’s reproductive health care as it involved pregnancies. The letter’s signatories propose looking at factors including residency, demographics, and mental-health diagnoses. They argue that if we better understand how pregnancies end — and mothers’ deaths associated with different outcomes — we will be able to more accurately identify preventable deaths and provide better women’s health care. And, despite the typical rhetoric from the abortion industry, our knowledge of and basic protocols in women’s health care is scandalously deficient.
“As states consider abortion ballot measures this fall, women and their health-care providers are still without the information to make informed decisions about their pregnancy, reflecting the risk of abortion post-Dobbs,” Gavin Oxley, director of External Affairs & Media Strategy at Americans United for Life told me. “Reforming flawed maternal mortality and abortion reporting systems is critical not only to public health, but combating misinformation that claims abortion is safe without the requisite supporting data.”
AUL has provided a policy backgrounder, written by Oxley, to put the letter in detailed context here.
The White House does not have to use political capital or extend an olive branch to pro-lifers to release this basic information. It’s a matter of basic reporting and interest in understanding what’s happening to women and the unborn after a major legal — and medical — shift with the end of Roe v. Wade. Timely and accurate documentation should be a baseline expectation, whatever one’s view on abortion is.