Congressman Gary Palmer (AL-06) is moving to mandate accurate reporting of abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC).

Palmer, along with Congressman Ralph Norman (R-SC), has now introduced H.R. 3580, the Ensuring Accurate & Complete Data Reporting Act.

“Accurate and transparent reporting on abortion and children who survive abortion attempts is essential to public health research and to determining sound policy,” Palmer said in a statement.

“Reporting abortion data has been voluntary for too long, and this has led to states withholding many data points routinely requested by the CDC,” he explained. “We must standardize and enforce reporting processes in this area and ensure that states have necessary assistance in collecting the required abortion data.”

Palmer concluded, “States should not be allowed to distort or provide faulty data in an effort to cover up the true numbers of innocent lives lost by abortion.”

If passed, H.R. 3580 would require the accurate reporting of abortion data to the CDC and ensure that states are given technical assistance to help with this data collection. Required data points would include the number of abortions and number of children who survive abortion attempts in each state.

States that withhold or falsify information would be penalized by losing eligibility for family planning services funding from Medicaid for a period of time.

How’s it possible that states can intentionally withhold data on the number of #abortions performed in this country?

That needs to change. pic.twitter.com/IpMFHpalHz

— Rep. Ralph Norman (@RepRalphNorman) June 28, 2019

Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn