On August 5, 2026, the Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the CDC, 51-44, largely along party lines. Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general and retired Coast Guard officer, is the first Black woman to lead the agency and its first Senate-confirmed director in about a year, after Susan Monarez was removed less than a month into the job in 2025.
The comment that drew attention came at her July 15 confirmation hearing before the Senate health committee. Sen. Josh Hawley said the CDC's abortion reporting system is voluntary and that “a number of states, not coincidentally large blue states, do not turn over any data,” and asked whether she would commit to getting better data. “Senator, you have my commitment,” Schwartz replied. “Abortion surveillance is absolutely a critical component of what the CDC is currently doing.” She added that she wanted to make sure “certain states are not conflating emergency services and hiding abortions in that emergency services case definition.” HuffPost reported there is no evidence that states are purposefully misclassifying abortion data.
CDC abortion surveillance is a statistical program the agency has run since 1969, built on aggregate data that states report voluntarily. In its most recent published report, covering 2022, four states did not report: California, Maryland, New Hampshire and New Jersey. What makes the exchange notable is the emphasis, coming from a Trump appointee while the administration's acting attorney general was telling religious groups that its push to restrict abortion would bring “victory.” Mini Timmaraju of Reproductive Freedom for All warned that under this administration “abortion surveillance could be expanded or weaponized to collect more intrusive information” (see Trump's AG Nominee Tells a Prayer Call the DOJ Is Working So 'the Dobbs Decision Becomes Permanent in Every Single State,' Signaling a Mail-Order Pill Crackdown).
Correction (October 2, 2026): The entry dated the hearing to around July 23 and said Schwartz herself pressed for data from every state; the hearing was July 15, the push came from Hawley, and Schwartz pledged her commitment in reply. It also listed three non-reporting states; CDC's 2022 report lists four, including New Jersey. A claim that the administration is moving to make state bans harder to circumvent was removed as unsourced.