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Utah House adopts bill to codify anonymized abortion reporting after weeks of debate and an amendment
Summary
The House passed Senate Bill 60 to enshrine collection of anonymized abortion statistics in state law, add ethnicity/race language, and preserve state access to the data; the measure passed 56–17 after floor amendments and extended debate about privacy and use of the data.
The Utah House of Representatives on the floor passed Senate Bill 60 on a 56–17 vote after extended debate and a successful amendment to clarify race and ethnicity reporting. Representative Grover, the House sponsor, told colleagues the bill does not change abortion policy but brings already-collected, anonymous reporting forms into state code so the Department of Health and lawmakers can access the data locally.
Advocates for the measure, including Representative Christiansen, framed the bill as a tool for understanding social drivers of abortion and said better data would inform prevention and education programs. Grover said the form is completed between provider and patient, is anonymous and that the state currently submits similar data to the CDC.
Opponents raised privacy concerns and warned the data could be used to pursue future legislation. Representative King said asking patients to explain why they sought an abortion intrudes on deeply personal decisions. Representative Wiley and others asked how specific items on the form would be gathered; Grover said the information would usually be collected by a provider during a standard clinical conversation or via a form and confirmed one question (the "reported reason" checkbox) is captured as a discrete item on the provided form.
Floor amendment and vote: Representative Red moved to insert "and ethnicities" after "races" in the bill’s relevant line to make reporting language consistent with census categories; the motion passed and the amendment was adopted. Grover and other supporters said the addition aligned the statute with the federal census style of data fields.
The House debated whether the form is voluntary and whether patients can refuse to answer. Grover said patients are encouraged but not compelled to provide answers and that refusing to answer would not prevent care. He also supplied a recent state figure of 3,081 abortions in Utah for 2011 as context for lawmakers questioning incidence levels.
Next steps: With passage in the House, the amended SB60 will be returned to the Senate for further consideration. The bill’s sponsor and supporters said it is intended to preserve the state’s ability to access disaggregated data if federal reporting policy changes.
Attribution: Quotations and attributable remarks in this article are taken from speeches and questions on the House floor as recorded in the session transcript; speakers are identified by name and role at first mention.
