Critics Sound Alarm Over GOP Sen. Katie Britt's Proposal to Establish National Registry of Pregnant Women

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt was criticized this weekend, after proposing a federal database which purportedly would provide resources to pregnant women — but would also collect their personal data to track them.

The senator's More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act would create pregnancy.gov, a website that would provide information about adoption services and pregnancy care —while explicitly excluding information about any provider who "performs, induces, refers for or counsels in favor of abortions."

The broad language of the bill would exclude a significant number of OB-GYNs and sexual health clinics, including Planned Parenthood, the country's single largest provider of reproductive healthcare.

The website would also encourage pregnant people to provide their data and contact information. A spokesperson for Britt said that the website would not collect data from users but this statement was contradicted by the bill's actual language, according to the Guardian.

Government officials would be able to "conduct outreach via phone or email to follow up with users on additional resources that would be helpful for the users to review," according to the legislation's text.

"I'm proud to support women throughout these seasons of motherhood," Britt said in a statement. "This legislation is further evidence that you can absolutely be pro-life, pro-woman, and pro-family at the same time."

Britt's proposal was swiftly blasted on social media as a way to track pregnant women — with some drawing comparisons to Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, "The Handmaid's Tale."

"According to the GOP, America needs a national registry for pregnant women along with the federal government tracking women's menstrual cycles," said Amy McGrath, a former Democratic Senate candidate from Kentucky. "Folks, they are extreme and they want to use government to take us back 100 years. It's real."

Former President Donald Trump declined to condemn a similar idea, during a recent interview with Time Magazine. But when asked whether states should monitor pregnancies, to see if people were accessing abortion after legal cutoffs, the presumptive Republican candidate said "they might do that," and said the issue should be left to "individual states."

It's "irrelevant whether I'm comfortable or not. It's totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions," he said. "And by the way, Texas is going to be different than Ohio. And Ohio is going to be different than Michigan. I see what's happening."