More than 31,000 pregnancies canceled by abortion providers in Michigan last year marks a record high for the last three decades, though where the increasing trend goes from there will be a mystery.
The 2023 Reproductive Health Act approved by Democrats and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year means the detailed annual report on Michigan abortions recently released by the Department of Health and Human Services will be the last.
Despite a concerning seven consecutive years of increasing abortions in the Great Lakes State, DHHS officials argue the “burdensome requirements” to report the basics on abortions have “no basis in science and were designed to dissuade women from accessing” abortions, department spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin told Bridge Michigan.
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Since 1982, the state has documented more than 1.3 million abortions, along with information on patients’ age and marital status, gestational progress, type of procedure, and complications.
The 2023 report released last week shows 31,241 of those abortions were performed last year, with all but 2,750 or 9% involving Michigan residents.
“That’s 1,132 more abortions (than last year) and it’s higher than any other year since 1994,” Bridge Detroit reports about the total. “In fact, the rate of abortion among Michigan residents has been inching upwards to 16.5 abortions in 2023 for every 1,000 Michigan women 15 to 44 years old. That’s the highest rate since 1989 when the state reported the same rate.”
Abortions peaked in Michigan at 49,098 in 1987, before generally declining to a low of 22,357 in 2009. It’s been an upward trajectory since, with the annual statistic increasing every year since 2016.
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Democrats opted to end Michigan’s abortion reporting requirements despite strong warnings from health professionals about the potential ramifications for women’s health.
“As a physician caring for women, I have to wonder at the audacity to name this bill ‘reproductive health.’ All of these measures you’re trying to repeal were enacted for the protection of health and safety of women undergoing abortion in our state,” Catherine Stark, longtime ob-gyn that directs the Crossroads Care Center in Auburn Hills, told lawmakers in September 2023.
“While these may inconvenience the abortion provider, they do serve a purpose in allowing the public to know when a clinic is not safe, or a provider has repetitive violations of care,” she said. “Wouldn’t you want to know which abortion clinics have a high rate of complications, or which clinic has had their license revoked due to dangerous practices?
“How could you know without reporting, licensing, and inspections?”
Beyond repealing the reporting requirements, the Reproductive Health Act that went into effect in February also repealed regulations on clinic operations, both of which were “designed to ensure safety and positive outcomes for the patient,” Genevive Marnon, legislative director for Right to Life of Michigan, told Bridge Michigan.
“The removal of the reporting requirements at the same time health and safety regulations for abortion clinics were removed should be of concern to any woman who walks into an abortion facility,” Marnon said.
Currently, 46 states and the District of Columbia require abortion providers to submit “regular and confidential reports to the state,” according to the Guttmacher Institute that tracks abortion laws.
Much of that data is voluntarily forwarded to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“As important as the topic of abortion is acknowledged to be, the inadequacies in public information about the procedure and its medical, economic and social consequences remain a national scandal,” according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the pro-life Susan B. Anthony’s nonprofit research and education institute. “Organizations across the ideological spectrum agree on the need for better reporting, calling our current system of uneven state data collection and voluntary national reporting ‘incomplete and out of date’ (Lozier Institute) or noting that the ‘quality and timeliness’ of data collection are variable (Guttmacher Institute).”
Federal lawmakers led by Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst and South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman aim improve the data with legislation introduced last year to make abortion reporting a requirement to receive targeted Medicaid funding for family planning programs.
“Because reporting abortion data is voluntary, the data collected severely underestimates the number of abortions taking place. The reality is tax dollars are blindly being allocated to family planning programs without a clear picture of efficiency,” Norman said.
“As if that’s not enough of an issue, the purpose of any family planning program is to promote health and to provide assistance to parents managing the number and spacing of their children – proactively,” he said. “If a pregnancy results in an abortion for convenience, legitimate family planning has failed in its objective.”