From Our Leadership

The first 100 days of a US presidential administration typically offer a glimpse into how the new head of state plans to govern. Since his inauguration on January 20, President Trump has shown, indisputably, that his will be a most challenging second term. His barrage of executive orders and policy mandates has caused chaos across sectors. His efforts to dismantle government and his attacks on democratic norms will have dire consequences throughout the nation and around the world. 

Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) were targeted on day one, when an executive order froze US foreign aid funding family planning programs worldwide; another declared the existence of only two sexes, “male and female”; and reproductiverights.gov, a government website that provided information on reproductive health care, was shut down. Within days, the administration had reinstated the so-called global gag rule, defunded UN agencies working on SRHR and started scrubbing reproductive and sexual health information from multiple government websites. 

In the ensuing weeks, the administration accelerated and amplified its onslaught. It deleted public data, including some CDC data sets on reproductive health, terminated long-standing research initiatives, such as the Demographic and Health Surveys Program, and canceled National Institutes of Health grants funding reproductive health research. More recently, the administration eviscerated federal health agencies and targeted Title X, the country’s only program providing family planning services to people with low incomes. All of these actions make scientific research more challenging. But they also make Guttmacher’s research on sexual and reproductive health more critical than ever.

We’ve released evidence of national and global impacts of the administration’s actions, connected with partners worldwide to discuss emerging risks and strategized to protect important research initiatives. We updated our official position on state abortion reporting, described in our Behind the Scenes feature below. We’ve also disseminated our evidence far and wide in an effort to stop harmful policies and protect essential programs, whether by garnering media coverage, briefing legislators and government officials, or equipping advocates with timely information.

One hundred days in, the new administration has demonstrated its animosity toward science, its disdain for public health and its zealous targeting of reproductive rights. The four years ahead promise to be tough. We promise a tenacious and determined evidence-based defense.

In solidarity,

Destiny Lopez and Jonathan Wittenberg
Co-Presidents and CEOs

Behind the Scenes

How we reconsidered state abortion reporting requirements

Guttmacher’s bread and butter is data. We collect and generate data, develop policy positions with it, and disseminate it globally to promote more equitable access to reproductive health care. We believe that data is powerful, and that it matters.

So when our researchers heard growing concerns about state requirements for collecting data on abortion, they paid close attention. “This came out of conversations with abortion providers—we were doing a lot of work with the Monthly Abortion Provision Study about how to ease the burden of data collection,” says data scientist Isaac Maddow-Zimet, who leads the project’s efforts to gather data from abortion providers across the United States. “The burden they said they were facing was from state-mandated abortion reporting.”

Forty-six states and the District of Columbia require abortion providers to submit data on each abortion they perform. The data reported vary by state, but can include patient age and marital status, whether patients get a medication or a procedural abortion, the gestational duration of the pregnancy and patient state of residence.

Information like this is important for understanding a common reproductive health outcome. It can highlight inequities in abortion access and be used to create public policies that improve outcomes. And many state health departments are dedicated to providing this data for the public good.

But growing political and legal hostility toward abortion rights makes such data collection fraught. Abortion providers were voicing increasing concerns about data privacy. The hard-right Project 2025 federal policy agenda proposes that all states establish compulsory abortion-reporting systems, with denial of federal funding streams as the enforcement mechanism. The potential was, and remains, very real for some states to use abortion reporting to surveil and criminalize abortion providers and patients.

Last summer, Guttmacher experts decided that the issue warranted a broader internal conversation. Maddow-Zimet, Joerg Dreweke, the Institute’s director of US communications, and Kelly Baden, our vice president for public policy, formed a cross-divisional team of nearly a dozen colleagues who would seek to answer the question: Should Guttmacher still advocate state-mandated abortion reporting?

“So much has changed since 2015,” says Baden, noting Guttmacher’s previous policy supporting such abortion data collection efforts and underscoring the importance of public health data. “While the value of data remains critical, the upending of abortion policy after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade meant we had to look more closely at the context. States are already collecting unnecessary amounts of data and contributing to stigmatizing environments regarding abortion.”

“Doing research on abortion and understanding how abortion counts change is tremendously important. And a lot of people are well placed to do it,” says Maddow-Zimet. But he says that states requiring providers to collect and report data comes with risks: “There is a long history of abortion reporting being weaponized.”

The team decided a more formal stakeholder process was warranted, one that would seek important perspectives from outside of the Institute to inform Guttmacher’s thinking. The goal was to refine and adopt a clear position that would guide our own policy initiatives and aid our partners, peers and allies in crafting their own. “By the fall, we were already getting requests from partners for help on the state level,” says Baden of the state legislators, advocates and governors who were in the process of revisiting their state laws on reporting mandates. “There was a sense of urgency. People needed Guttmacher to take a position on this.”

The team leads brought in several colleagues from their respective divisions and a trusted consultant for guidance. By October, they started brainstorming with people in the field, inviting them to join either a series of six virtual focus-group meetings or one-on-one conversations. More than 55 external experts attended focus groups convened specifically for researchers, abortion providers, public health officials, and state and national coalition partners; they represented reproductive health, rights and justice organizations and abortion funds, and included individuals with legal expertise.

“Our goal was to hear a range of perspectives from a variety of folks. We got an enormous amount of feedback,” says Maddow-Zimet. “One thing we heard really clearly from a lot of folks was that different states may have different uses for abortion data.”

Baden agreed: “We wanted to be thoughtful about the impact on the states already protective of abortion rights that use their abortion reporting data for their policy agendas. And weigh the risks and rewards in the current political climate.”

During the post-election period, the Guttmacher team digested stakeholders’ input, questions and qualms. It considered our institutional commitment to patient and provider safety and rights, and updated our position: Guttmacher would oppose state laws mandating abortion reporting while recognizing the value of the data and the need for state coalitions to lead their own state policy strategies. 

“We’re not suggesting people stop collecting data on abortion,” says Maddow-Zimet. “What we focused on was legal mandates for the submission of abortion data from providers.” The team tuned this position with a broader array of research colleagues and the executive leadership team. After another cycle of conversations and considerations, the team felt confident that its proposed position was sound. Guttmacher released its updated position on state abortion reporting requirements in March.

“This is where the magic of Guttmacher comes into play,” says Baden about how well the cross-divisional team worked together and with an array of allies and partners to address this important position shift—even when there was not unanimity. “It speaks to the value of this organization and the diverse range of expertise Guttmacher holds in house, that researchers, policy experts and communications professionals were able to work so closely together to tackle this issue and serve as a resource to the field.”

Evidence in Action

This spring, the UN convened the 69th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69/Beijing+30). Guttmacher commemorated this consequential event by penning a statement on the state of affairs 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and hosting a side event on March 17 called It All Adds Up: New Data to Drive Gender Equality. Partners and advocates enjoyed stimulating discussion about our forthcoming research demonstrating how gender equality can be achieved only by advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights and by ensuring bodily autonomy for all women.

(L to R) Guttmacher senior research associate Mariam Gulaid, Naa Dodua Dodoo, senior research and policy analyst at the African Institute for Development Policy, and Guttmacher’s VP for communications & publications, Maibe Ponet.

Guttmacher research, communications and policy staff who hosted the side event.

(L to R) Samukeliso Dube, executive director of FP2030, and Elizabeth Sully, Guttmacher’s director of international research.

Fast Facts

Abortion and postabortion care in Pakistan

Although the law in Pakistan prohibits abortion unless it’s needed to save a woman’s life or to provide “necessary treatment” early in a pregnancy, 64% of unintended pregnancies end in abortion. In fact, according to a recent study Guttmacher conducted with Population Council, Pakistan, abortion numbers and rates in the country have been on the rise. From 2012 to 2023, the annual rate of abortion increased by 25%. This finding suggests that women rely on abortion more now than they did in the past to space or limit births.

What could account for the uptick? Unmet need for contraception, which is high in the country. Roughly 17% of married women aged 15–49 aren’t using contraception, even though they don’t want to get pregnant.

Is abortion safer, too? Yes, since the early 2000s, when medication abortion first became available in Pakistan. The widespread availability and use of misoprostol for clandestine abortions contributed to a 16% decline in treatment rates for abortion complications between 2012 and 2023. Still, complications from abortion and miscarriage contribute to approximately 10% of maternal deaths.

Meanwhile, the quality of postabortion care remains a concern:

• One in five public-sector health facilities were not providing postabortion care in 2023, even though offering such services is mandated.
• Half of all facilities still use a non-recommended method to treat some abortion complications.

The reproductive health recommendation: Improving contraceptive services would lead to reductions in unintended pregnancy and abortion. And fully implementing the national postabortion care service delivery standards and guidelines would enable public health facilities to provide quality postabortion care.

We Recommend... 

• While exploring a Minneapolis comic book shop, senior data analyst Meltem Odabaş discovered this neat Abortion Pill Zine explaining how to use misoprostol and mifepristone for a medication abortion.
• Senior digital communications assistant Gigi Singer dug the Pudding’s interactive United States of Abortion Mazes graphic demonstrating the labyrinthine paths to accessing abortion in many states.
• Senior US communications assistant Maya Cherins loved the novel The Rachel Incident, by Caroline O’Donoghue, and its central themes of abortion and reproductive health.
• The Telegraph published an exposé, recommended by senior editor Jenny Sherman, of the dark side of the global surrogacy industry.

Notions 

Chase Strangio has a long history of fighting for transgender rights, including as codirector of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. On December 4, 2024, he became the first transgender attorney to argue before the Supreme Court in US v. Skrmetti, a landmark challenge against Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, and reminded the crowd of supporters outside of SCOTUS, “We are in it together.” As Chase wrote in The New York Times, the Court’s decision will impact the health and well-being of trans people nationwide.