Calling them “government surveillance,” Gov. Katie Hobbs wants lawmakers to repeal a host of laws that require abortion providers to report details on pregnant women to the state.

The governor’s call comes as the Department of Health Services on Dec. 18 released its annual report spelling out not just the number of abortions performed but various details, ranging from the procedure used and the gestational age of the fetus to the race of the woman and the reason she wanted to terminate a pregnancy.

While the doctors and clinics making the reports know the identity of their patients, none of that is furnished to the health department. And none is included in the public report.

But the governor said the requirement to even gather the information – something that is not required of any other medical procedure – is unacceptable.

“This report is an attack on our freedom, is unacceptable, and must be brought to an end,” Hobbs said in a prepared statement. “The government has no place in surveilling Arizonans’ medical decision-making or tracking their health history.”

Hobbs, however, can’t do this on her own: The reporting requirements are set out in state law, meaning she needs approval of the Republican-controlled Legislature. There, she will get a fight from Cathi Herrod, president of the anti-abortion Center for Arizona Policy, who said collecting the information is squarely within the duties of the health department.

“They say abortion is health care,” Herrod said of those who support abortion rights. “Well, if abortion is health care, then is there not a valid reason to know what’s going on with the provision of that health care?”

Herrod also pointed out that women are free to refuse to answer the questions. And in all cases, the medical providers do not share the names of the women with the state.

Still, she said, just having doctors ask the questions can be helpful.

Consider, Herrod said, a situation where a woman discloses that she’s seeking to terminate her pregnancy because she’s being coerced or is the victim of sexual assault. In that case, Herrod said, the abortion provider can give her information on her to report a crime.

“The appropriate question is, why does Governor Hobbs not want Arizona lawmakers and the public to know what’s going on with abortion and how to help women,” Herrod said.  

And it remains questionable at best whether the Republican-controlled Legislature will go along.

Hobbs, however, remains adamant that doctors and clinics shouldn’t be asking the questions in the first place.

“Starting a family is a sensitive and personal experience for a woman and her loved ones,” the governor said. “There should be no room for government surveillance and publication of that decision.”

Some of the information collected is strictly statistical.

For example, the report shows there were 12,705 abortions performed in 2023  on Arizona residents. By contrast, there were 77,881 live births among Arizonans.

That number of abortions is the lowest since the state began using the current reporting standards in 2011 – with one exception.

In 2022, there were just 11,407 abortions performed. That was the year the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and its pretty much unrestricted right to an abortion, at least through fetal viability, generally considered between 22 and 24 weeks. And for a few months, most abortions in Arizona came to a halt after a judge ruled to allow prosecutors to enforce that territorial-era law outlawing abortion except to save the life of the mother.

That ruling eventually was stayed. But what has been left since is a law limiting abortions to just the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

That should soon go away with voter approval of Proposition 139, which enshrined the right to abortion in the Arizona Constitution.

But for 2023, it meant that of the 12,705 abortions performed, just 21 were beyond 15 weeks.

By contrast, in 2021 – the last full year before Roe was overturned – there were 824 abortions after 15 weeks out of 13,896 performed.

But the fetal age is just one of the many statistics that the health department gathers and reports and that the governor finds unnecessarily intrusive. For example, there’s the question asked about why a woman is terminating her pregnancy.

The vast majority are listed simply as elective. But other reasons cited include a desire not to have children and financial considerations to the woman being a victim of domestic violence as well as either fetal or maternal health considerations.

And one-third of women simply refused to answer.

There’s also data about the race and ethnicity of those who get an abortion, whether the woman is married, how much education she has and even the number of times she has been pregnant before and how many prior abortions she has had.

“The existence of a government registry of pregnancies grossly infringes on our right to privacy,” Hobbs said in her statement.

Gubernatorial press aide Christian Slater acknowledged that nothing in the report identifies any particular individual.

But he said that someone might be able to analyze the data to figure out who has had an abortion, particularly as the report contains information about the residency of a pregnant woman.

For example, there were just eight abortions performed on women from Apache County, with 11 each from Mohave and La Paz counties.

Other data in the report show that there were six women who had abortion-related complications in 2023, with five of those resulting from abortions performed between 14 and 20 weeks.

And 31 minors sought abortions without getting parental consent; judges granted 28 of those.

Legislation to repeal the reporting will be sponsored by Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton. The Tucson Democrat was the author of legislation earlier this year that led to the repeal of the territorial-era ban on abortions.

What Hobbs is trying to do has the backing of Dr. Jill Gibson, medical director of Planned Parenthood Arizona.

“Our government should not have the right to surveil and maintain records of Arizona women’s personal medical decisions, or those of the doctor providing them care,” she said in a prepared statement. But Gibson said it goes beyond privacy.

“As a doctor, I know firsthand how this reporting, mandated by the state Legislature, requires providers to take time away from providing actual care to our patients and to instead spend countless hours reporting their private health history and personal characteristics to the state,” she said “This type of reporting is medically unnecessary, and unfairly applied to abortion care.”