Committee hears sharply divided testimony on bill requiring statewide reporting of abortion statistics; DHHS warns of privacy and fiscal costs

Senator Kevin Abarth introduced Senate Bill 36 as a measure to require state reporting of anonymized abortion statistics, saying New Hampshire is one of a small number of states that does not collect such data and arguing better statistics are needed for policymaking.

Patricia Tilly, associate commissioner at the Department of Health and Human Services, told the committee the bill would create a new reporting system that the department does not now have authority or a HIPAA‑compliant technical platform to operate. Tilly said the bill as drafted appears to expand reporting from late-term procedures in RSA 329 to all terminations and would require more detailed elements — including dates and locations — that, under HIPAA rules, are treated as identifiers and therefore require secure handling.

Why it matters: Supporters say standardized data would inform public-health work and clarify the scale and methods of abortion care in New Hampshire; opponents and DHHS warned that collecting and storing dates, places and narrow gestational ages in a small state could make re‑identification possible and might expose patients and providers to legal and security risks.

Major testimony and technical points

- Department capacity and cost: Patricia Tilly said DHHS lacks the statutory authority and the system to collect the data as drafted. The department estimated one-time development costs of about $950,000 for a HIPAA-compliant electronic reporting system (using a Salesforce platform), plus roughly $250,000 for a verification connection to the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification, and additional staffing needs (one full-time data/statistics position and a part-time systems/troubleshooting position).

- Privacy and safety concerns: Providers and privacy advocates — including Dartmouth Health, Planned Parenthood Northern New England (PPNNE), the ACLU of New Hampshire and the Levering Health Center — urged strong anonymization, aggregation and limits on the specific elements collected and published. Witnesses stressed the risk that date, place and gestational-age data together could identify individuals or expose providers to cross‑jurisdictional legal requests in an environment where other states are seeking out-of-state records.

- Support for data but with protections: Some witnesses, including representatives of New Futures and New Hampshire Right to Life, said statewide statistics are necessary for public-health surveillance and program evaluation; Right to Life also urged inclusion of post‑abortion complications in reporting and a penalty for nonreporting. Several providers said they already submit aggregate data to national partners such as the Guttmacher Institute and the National Abortion Federation and asked that any state reporting standard mirror the aggregate formats those organizations use.

Committee action and next steps

- Fiscal note request: Committee members voted in committee to request a fiscal note from the Legislature’s budget office on SB 36 so that the department’s development- and staffing‑cost estimates could be formalized for the record.

Ending

Senators recessed the hearing after a broad set of public-health and privacy arguments. Witnesses on both sides asked for follow-up work on language that would preserve patient and provider privacy while providing useful, non‑identifiable statistics for policymakers and the public.