Session: State Capitol, Room 102 Juneau, AK 99801-1182 Toll Free: (877) 465-3719 Phone: (907) 465-3719 Fax: (907) 465-3258 Personal Web Site: www.johncoghill.com Interim: 119 N Cushman Street, Suite 211 Fairbanks, AK 99701 Phone: (907) 456-5081 Fax: (907) 456-8245

Sponsor Statement for HB 160
Reporting of Abortions

An Act requiring the reporting of induced terminations of pregnancies.

At present the State of Alaska does not monitor or collect any abortion data. This hampers efforts on a state and national level in publishing and evaluating accurate abortion statistics in relation to important maternal health information.

House Bill 160 implements a reporting system for abortions in Alaska, requiring physicians to submit an induced termination of pregnancy report within thirty days after the procedure to the Bureau of Vital Statistics. Vital Statistics will then publish the aggregated data in an annual report.

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher Institute collect and evaluate abortion statistics. Data from abortion surveillance is used in conjunction with birth data and fetal death computations to estimate pregnancy rates and other maternal health rates.

Moreover, ongoing annual surveillance is used to monitor trends in the number, ratio, and rate of abortions in the United States and provide data for assessing changes in clinical practice patterns related to abortion.

States collect these statistics through their individual abortion reporting systems, and it is compiled and published at the national level by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, some states, including Alaska, have no abortion reporting system.

The Centers for Disease Control and the National Center for Health Statistics advocate the collection of detailed abortion data since it is vital to accurate evaluations of abortion related topics and essential for both health and public policy issues.

The information that House Bill 160 would require to be reported is modeled after the federal guidelines for induced termination of pregnancy reports, established by the National Center for Health Statistics.

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