This will be updated.
The administration of President Donald Trump has reversed its decision to cancel a program that allows parents to register their newborns for Social Security numbers from hospital maternity wards.
Alisa Morton, spokesperson for Maine Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed Friday morning that the Social Security Administration has reinstated two contracts that enable birth and death information from Maine providers to be shared with the federal agency electronically.
The Social Security Administration initially notified Maine officials this week that it was canceling contracts it had with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s office of data, research and vital statistics. Maine CDC sent out notifications Wednesday to providers of such services that those contracts had abruptly been terminated.
The Trump administration’s reversal on the order was first reported by the Portland Press Herald.
The cancellation of the contracts meant that parents of newborns would have to travel in person to the agency’s offices with their infants to fill out paper applications to have Social Security numbers assigned to them. Funeral home directors would have had to send in paperwork to Social Security officials, certifying to the agency that someone had died, rather than sending in that information electronically.
Theresa Roberts, vital records supervisor at Maine CDC, said in a letter to providers on Wednesday that the program that allowed parents to apply at hospitals and other birthing centers for Social Security numbers for their new babies — called enumeration at birth, or EAB — has been widely used.
“EAB is voluntary for parents,” she said in the letter. “However, almost all parents utilized the EAB to obtain an SSN for their child.”
