California fails to collect basic abortion data — even as it invites an out-of-state influx
This story was updated June 27, 2022 to include the most recent budget information.
With federal abortion protections eliminated in a watershed U.S. Supreme Court decision, California is preparing for a flood of out-of-state women seeking abortions as it positions itself as a stronghold for reproductive rights. Most lawmakers are even willing to foot the multi-million-dollar bill.
But amid all the politicking one crucial question remains unanswered: How does California plan for a significant increase when it doesn’t know how many abortions are currently performed in the state?
Although almost every other state tracks abortion information — including how many people arrive from out of state — California is one of three that does not. The California Department of Public Health has not kept track of any abortion data since 1997. When CalMatters asked why, the agency did not provide an answer.
“Having a lack of information and data is sometimes an issue,” said Jessica Pinckney, executive director of ACCESS Reproductive Justice, which provides funding for those who can’t afford abortions.
“Every journalist and every legislator I’ve talked to in the past six months wants to know how many people are coming to California,” Pinckney said.
A recent brief from UCLA’s Center on Law, Reproductive Health, and Policy estimated that post-Roe, 26 states would ban all or nearly all abortions — prompting between 8,000 and 16,100 more people to travel to California seeking abortions each year.
Yet as of today, there’s no centralized system collecting information on how many Californians are obtaining abortions here. Individual clinics and hospitals in California know how many procedures they perform, but it’s hard to get the full picture on abortions and how much they cost, Pinckney said. State officials said the new Health Care Payments Database, which tracks insurance claims, should capture abortion procedures and medication, but the information likely won’t be available until the end of next year.
In the meantime, estimating future demand for abortion services remains difficult — but that hasn’t stopped legislators from pushing forward with big-ticket budget proposals.
In a budget deal announced Sunday night, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Legislators pledged more than $200 million to improve reproductive health care in the state, including $40 million to directly subsidize the cost of providing abortions for low-income or uninsured patients.
Next year, most insurance plans in the state will be required to eliminate out-of-pocket fees for abortion services, meaning the money will go primarily to uninsured Californians and out-of-state residents.
“With today’s Supreme Court decision to endanger the health and safety of millions of women across the country, California must do everything it can to protect the fundamental rights of all women – in California and beyond,” Newsom said in a statement following the Supreme Court decision.
Much of the funding is part of a 15-bill package pushed forward by the California Future of Abortion Council to improve clinical infrastructure, strengthen privacy protections and remove barriers to access. The abortion council was convened by Newsom in 2021 to assess the reproductive health landscape in California and draft policy recommendations for lawmakers.
Given the perilous state of abortion rights in most of the country, the legislation and funding is necessary for California to “truly be a reproductive freedom state,” said Lisa Matsubara, general counsel for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, one of the council’s leading organizations.
The budet deal also commits $20 million over three years to establish the California Abortion Support Fund to help offset travel, child care and other costs that might prohibit a woman from getting to a clinic.
However, much like the question of how many non-residents will seek abortions here, the number of Californians who need additional support is at best a guesstimate.
Abortion data: What do we know?
“It is my dream to set up some sort of surveillance system for California,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a leading abortion researcher and associate professor-in-residence at UC San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. Among researchers and public health professionals, surveillance is a term used to describe routine data collection and analysis to assess trends.
“For a researcher (surveillance) is incredible. It’s really helpful to understand access,” Upadhyay said.
Although the state doesn’t track abortions, that doesn’t mean that there’s no information out there, advocates say. The Guttmacher Institute, a national reproductive health think tank, is widely cited for its survey of abortion providers. The organization sends a survey to all known abortion providers in the country every three years to calculate its estimates.
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