Minnesota Abortions Drop to Lowest Total Since 1974 as More Babies Saved From Abortion

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Jul 1, 2019   |   1:39PM   |   St. Paul, Minnesota

Abortions in Minnesota dropped below 10,000 in 2018 as more mothers chose life for their unborn babies.

The state Department of Health released its annual abortion report Monday, showing a 2-percent drop in abortions from 2018 to 2017, according to the Star Tribune. Three babies also survived abortions that year, the report states.

Minnesota saw 9,910 abortions in 2018, the third lowest number since 1974, according to the report.

“Pregnancy support, ultrasound images, public education, and Minnesota’s pro-life laws continue to empower women and save unborn lives,” said Scott Fischbach, executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.

Abortions have been dropping steadily for years in the state as pro-life advocates work to support mothers and educate residents about the humanity of the unborn child. Abortions have declined 23 percent since 2008 and 48 percent since 1980, the pro-life organization noted.

One of the most significant drops was among teenagers. According to the local news, abortions on pregnant women ages 19 and under dropped 17 percent in the last five years.

The state report shows that more women traveled from out of state to abort their unborn babies: 1,014, up from 938 in 2017.

Additionally, the report states that three babies survived outside the womb after being aborted. State law requires that infants who survive abortions be provided basic medical care; however, none survived long after their birth.

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The report also noted that Planned Parenthood is doing more abortions in Minnesota. In 2018, the abortion chain performed 63 percent of all abortions in the state – or 6,292 unborn babies, according to the report.

“Meanwhile, according to Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota’s annual reports, the group’s contraception services have dropped 83 percent since 2013. Its cancer screenings (mostly manual breast exams and pap tests) have fallen 56 percent,” according to the pro-life organization.

Pro-life advocates are concerned that abortions could increase again if a new lawsuit from abortion activists succeeds.

“… most of our commonsense abortion-reducing laws would be eliminated if the current lawsuit is successful,” Fischbach said. “It targets reasonable and commonsense laws that have been in place for decades and that have helped thousands of people.”

Filed in May, the lawsuit seeks to overturn a number of state abortion regulations, including the informed consent law, parental notification law and abortion reporting law.

The new Minnesota abortion report reflects a wider trend across the United States. A November 2018 report by the Centers for Disease Control showed abortions at an all-time low since 1973, the year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, according to the Washington Post.

The CDC recorded 638,169 abortions in 2015 in the U.S., a 2-percent drop from 2014. The abortion rate declined to 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

However, the CDC report is incomplete. Reporting abortion numbers to the CDC is voluntary, and California, Maryland and New Hampshire did not provide their numbers to the agency. Several other states provided limited data.

The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research group, which is considered to have the most comprehensive abortion numbers, reported the total number of abortions in the U.S. was 926, 200 in 2014. Though higher than the CDC numbers, this number still represents a significant drop from the late 1980s and early 1990s when the U.S. saw about 1.5 million a year.

Abortion activists claim greater access to birth control and sex education are reasons for the decline, but even they admit that pro-life efforts are leading to fewer abortions. Every year, pro-lifers are successfully saving unborn babies and moms from abortion through laws, pregnancy resource centers, education efforts, sidewalk counseling and more.