Sen. Kevin Avard proposes statewide abortion reporting; DHHS warns of privacy, costs

Sen. Kevin Avard, the prime sponsor of Senate Bill 36, told the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee that the bill would require health care providers, medical facilities and the Department of Health and Human Services to collect and report data on pregnancy terminations in New Hampshire.

The bill would expand reporting under the state’s Fetal Life Protection Act so that reports are required for all terminated pregnancies, rather than only for fetal terminations after 24 weeks. “This bill basically requires the collection and reporting of certain abortion statistics by the health care providers, medical facilities, and the Department of Health and Human Services,” Avard said at the hearing.

Whitney Hammond, interim deputy director for DHHS’s Division of Public Health Services, told the committee the department is neutral on the bill but outlined technical and privacy issues. Hammond said the current statute references the wrong RSA section and that, as drafted, the proposed rule would call for reporting of items—including the date and the county of the procedure—that the department treats as protected health information under HIPAA. “Those data elements include date of the procedure being completed as well as the county where the procedure is completed. And both of those data elements would, would be considered private health or personal health information,” Hammond said.

Hammond described a technical plan the department had costed: an $882,000 module to add to the department’s Salesforce instance to collect, validate and protect the data, plus staffing costs the department estimates at roughly $61,000 in the first year of operation and about $122,000 annually thereafter. She added the department estimates roughly 2,800 terminations per year in New Hampshire, citing the Guttmacher Institute for the estimate, and warned that granular fields could make individuals identifiable in small counties or narrow date ranges.

Several organizations and advocates offered testimony. Isabella Peters of Cornerstone opposed the bill as written, saying enforcement and penalties were insufficient and voicing distrust of DHHS and clinics. “If the DHHS is found to break the law, they face, or the clinics, they face a $100 fine. That’s it,” Peters told lawmakers. Rory Dennehy of New Hampshire Right to Life and the Knights of Columbus also opposed passage without further study and amendments, arguing the fine for false reporting would be inadequate. Courtney Tanner of Dartmouth Health said Dartmouth would be “comfortable” if the bill passed as it was amended, but warned against routing data to non‑HIPAA entities such as the state’s vital records office. Planned Parenthood’s Liz Canada testified that her affiliate is neutral but said privacy concerns were taken up in the Senate and that the affiliate complies with aggregated reporting in neighboring states.

Committee members asked whether the reporting requirement would disclose late‑term procedures and whether current state law or other statutes would be affected. DHHS staff said the current statute requires reporting after 24 weeks but has not generated any reports to date; they also identified a drafting error that references the wrong RSA section. Witnesses and members pressed for clarifications on who would be required to report, how licensing validation would be performed (DHHS indicated an interface to OPLC, the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification), and whether data elements could be aggregated (DHHS said using year or month instead of exact dates would reduce HIPAA concerns but would still require technical controls and authentication for reporting users).

No formal committee action was taken during the public hearing. Several witnesses urged amendments to strengthen enforcement, increase penalties for false reporting, and narrow or clarify reporting fields to reduce privacy risk. DHHS said it is neutral and willing to work on technical amendments and that the agency lacks the technical module requested without appropriation.

The committee closed the public hearing on SB 36 after testimony from multiple advocacy organizations, DHHS staff and health system representatives.