San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
State remains mum on figures for out-of-state abortion seekers
California is spending millions of dollars and implementing laws to bolster its ability to accommodate abortion-seekers from all over the country — but there’s a catch: It is virtually impossible to find out how many people from out-of-state are traveling here for medical help that in some cases is paid for with state taxpayer dollars.
Not only is California one of a handful of states that doesn’t track the number of abortions providers perform, but none of the abortion-related legislation that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Tuesday — much of it backed by $200 million in state funds — requires disclosure, either. Nor does Proposition 1, a statewide ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in California’s Constitution.
The lack of data will make it harder to determine which programs are working and whether public resources are allocated in the best possible way to help patients and the providers who serve them.
Newsom has been promoting a new state-funded abortion website via social media. He even spent $100,000 from his campaign fund to erect billboards in states hostile to abortion rights, encouraging women to use the website to help them travel to California to have the procedure.
But his office refuses to say how many people have visited the website from each state, numbers that would show whether it is attracting attention from people in states that
are cracking down on abortion.
Private entities haven’t provided much clarity either. Representatives of Planned Parenthood clinics around the state have declined to offer specifics on how many more people have visited California from out of state since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade and left states to decide whether to permit abortions. Since the June ruling, 12 states have banned most abortions and eventually half of the states are expected to forbid the procedure.
Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst with the Guttmacher Institute, a research outfit that supports reproductive rights, understands the privacy concerns involved with disclosing abortion statistics but said California could benefit from reporting those numbers. It is one of three states — Maryland and New Hampshire are the others — that do not report abortions to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I would think California would just want to evaluate how these programs worked and worked together and if they met the needs that they’re intending to meet,” Nash said. “This isn’t a sort of a punitive thing. This is literally an evaluation of a policy and to find a way to ensure that access is expanded.”
Richard Temple, a top strategist with the No on Prop. 1 campaign, called the lack of reporting “outrageous.”
“I don’t get this,” Temple said. The state “is paying for them.”
Earlier this year, UCLA’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy published a report that estimated that between 8,000 and 16,000 people will travel to California each year for abortion care in a postRoe world.
But the state isn’t tallying those numbers.
Abortion rights supporters say their concerns about privacy prevent them from releasing any information about abortions.
“We’re trying to protect providers and patients and from people that are really doing everything they can to create this culture of fear and confusion, and criminalizing providers and patients,” Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California CEO Jodi Hicks said. “First and foremost, people need to have safe access to care.”
She was concerned that even releasing raw numbers of patients who have traveled from other states might aid antiabortion activists and lawmakers seeking to track down providers and patients and pursue criminal charges against them.
Data privacy experts have been raising the alarm that data from apps and websites, such as period tracking apps, could be used by law enforcement to prosecute women who have abortions. In Nebraska, police obtained Facebook messages from a mother and her daughter to build a case to charge them with illegally carrying out a medication abortion, according to CNN.
“We don’t want to help any states who are trying to aggressively penalize people that need care,” Hicks said. “We certainly don’t want to give them any tools to help them do that.”
Hicks said she didn’t “have an overall number I can tell you” of people who have traveled to California since the Dobbs ruling. She added, without specifics, that “many of our affiliates are experiencing a sometimes doubling of what they normally see from patients coming from out of state” — particularly in the number of people who have traveled to clinics in Southern California from Arizona.
Nor are there specifics on online visitors to the website California launched two weeks ago to help people obtain abortions in the Golden State.
“Need an abortion? California is here to help” reads one of the billboards that Newsom’s campaign paid for in several states that have passed or are looking to pass abortion bans — Indiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Texas, South Carolina, South Dakota and Oklahoma.
In a video he posted on social media, Newsom emphasized the site does not track users who visit it. Legal disclaimers on the site explain that while the site tracks page views, the states people view the site from, the type of browser they use and the links they click, it does not collect their names, IP addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses.
The site informs users that the public may be able to request that data using the state’s public record laws, but Newsom’s office has refused to release traffic data broken down by state, citing security risks.
“Because the website traffic data are maintained for security purposes only, revealing the underlying data on the sources of traffic by state could reveal the website’s security analysis features,” Newsom spokesman Alex Stack said.
Alex Stamos, a cybersecurity expert and director of the Internet Observatory at Stanford University, said he didn’t think the information The Chronicle was requesting could jeopardize the site’s security. The website likely takes IP address data and converts it into location data, so that individual IP addresses, which identify a specific device, aren’t stored, he said.
“I don’t think there is a legitimate argument that breaking down traffic by state would pose a security risk,” Stamos said.
Rob Stutzman, a GOP political consultant who served as the spokesman for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, called the governor’s office’s security argument “bulls—.”
Stutzman said one possible reason for keeping the numbers quiet might be that few people are using the site, despite Newsom and other abortion advocates’ assertions that demand would surge in California as other states work to eliminate abortion rights. If the site’s traffic numbers are low, that could be seen as evidence the website is just a publicity stunt.
“It seems like something taxpayers would have a right to know — is this whole effort effective?” he said.
Stack called the idea that Newsom’s office would withhold the state-by-state data for political purposes “absurd” and “insulting.” The governor’s office built the site itself and didn’t contract with outside services in order to protect users’ data from law enforcement in other states where abortions are illegal, Stack said. Stack said the site received about 60,000 views in the first week it launched, with about half from out of state and half within California. In its second week, it received an additional 10,000 views, bringing the total to 70,000 with about 58% of visits from out of state.
Kim Nalder, a political science professor at Sacramento State, said there could be political motivations for not releasing data related to abortions.
“Any data that’s released is likely to be weaponized by political opponents,” she said.
High traffic from states hostile to abortion would bolster Newsom’s argument that his work to make California a haven for abortion seekers is important. Low traffic, she said, “would undercut the argument that California is rushing to the aid of women in other states if they’re not rushing to come here.”
It’s important for the state to safeguard privacy, she said, but it’s also important to have good, transparent data.
“As a matter of good policy, you do want to have transparency on numbers,” she said. “If policymakers want to make smart decisions moving forward, having these numbers is key.”
Some health care policy analysts are trying to find out on their own how many people are traveling to get abortions. Ushma Upadhyay, co-director of the UCGHI Center for Gender and Health Justice at UC San Francisco, is leading WeCount, a national effort to track shifts in where and how people obtain abortions. It will obtain the information by asking providers to voluntarily send them the information. The group plans to release the data it collects in November.
Upadhyay said she expects California to play a large role in accommodating people seeking abortions from other parts of the country, but other states will, too.
“I expect that California has a role in meeting the increased demand for abortion care among people traveling from states with abortion bans,” Upadhyay said. “But perhaps not as large as other states in the middle of the country like Colorado, Kansas and Illinois.”