Katie Britt, the Republican US senator from Alabama best known for delivering a widely ridiculed State of the Union speech in March, marked the run-up to Mother’s Day on Sunday by introducing a bill to create a federal database to collect data on pregnant people.
The More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (Moms) act proposes to establish an online government database called “pregnancy.gov” listing resources related to pregnancy, including information about adoption agencies and pregnancy care providers, except for those that provide abortion-related services.
The bill specifically forbids any entity that “performs, induces, refers for, or counsels in favor of abortions” from being listed in the database, which would in effect eliminate swaths of OB-GYN services and sexual health clinics across the country.
The website would direct users to enter their personal data and contact information, and although Britt’s communications director said the site would not collect data on pregnant people, page three of the bill states that users can “take an assessment through the website and provide consent to use the user’s contact information” which government officials may use “to conduct outreach via phone or email to follow up with users on additional resources that would be helpful for the users to review”.