(LifeSiteNews) — The Trump administration’s U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has suspended reporting and analysis of abortion data without explanation, confounding state governments and activists on both sides of the issue.
Virginia Public Radio WVFT reports that a recent routine email from the Virginia Department of Vital Statistics to the CDC regarding the annual sharing of abortion data received an unexpected one-sentence email reply: “At this time, CDC is pausing data analysis and will not be releasing an abortion surveillance report.”
The CDC did not reply to WVFT’s requests for elaboration. Live Action also requested an explanation, but only received “On background: At this time, CDC is pausing data analysis on abortion surveillance” in reply.
The news has been met with a rare display of bipartisan disapproval. “When it comes to the depopulation of the next generation of Americans, the state and federal governments have a vested interest in collecting this data,” Family Foundation of Virginia leader Victoria Cobb said. “It makes sense to analyze data, to study data, and to make changes and adjustments based on that data,” agreed Rae Pickett of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia.
Theories varied as to the reason for the change. Isaac Maddow-Zimet of the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute surmised that “if that report is started again, it will present data in a way that isn’t grounded in science, or which seeks to make the case for restricting abortion care [sic].”
Others surmise the reporting is a casualty of spending cuts. Back in May, Politico quoted Patrick Brown, a conservative family policy analyst with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, as worrying that “short-sighted” layoffs within the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health would impact abortion data.
“This is the kind of basic statistics gathering that there’s just not really a good free market solution for,” he argued. “Collecting data like this is a pretty classic function of government and it’s not something that you can rely on private industry or even academic institutions to do in the same scope or scale.”
According to a March 2025 report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, 46 states plus the District of Columbia have “some form” of abortion reporting requirements, but there is no uniform nationwide standard. The CDC has acknowledged that it only collects abortion data voluntarily submitted by states, whose reporting rules vary significantly. California, Maryland, and New Hampshire – three states that are significantly pro-abortion – have historically submitted no data whatsoever, further limiting the public’s understanding of the frequency of things such as late-term abortion and abortion complications.
Reliable, comprehensive data on abortion is more important than ever now that states can directly set their own abortion laws, so policymakers can study and compare the results of the various combinations of state policies (total bans, partial restrictions, public funding, etc.) and how efforts to ban abortion are undermined by tactics such as deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, and making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors.