Last week the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services (MDHHS) released their latest abortion statistics report for the state of Michigan. In 2017, 26,594 abortions occurred in the state: 97% of those abortions were done on Michigan residents. The overall number is sadly slightly up 0.8% from 2016, with 26,395 abortions reported that year.
Even with the heart-breaking news of a slight increase instead of a massive decrease—as we work and hope for ever year—overall abortions in Michigan are down 45.6% since 1987.
There were several key trends to take note of in the 2017 report.
52% of Michigan resident women who received an abortion were receiving their second or more abortion. This repeat abortion figure has been slowly increasing annually. 65% of women having an abortion had carried a previous pregnancy to term. 90% of women who had abortions were not married.
Medical abortions using the RU-486 abortion pill regimen continue to trend up as the cheapest method for the abortion industry to use. In 2017, RU-486 accounted for 35.5% of abortions, up from 30% in 2016. Seeing this trend shows us how important it is that we continue educating women about abortion pill reversal. We will never know how many of the women would have changed their minds if they knew that was an option, but we do know many women have instantly regretted their abortion decision, and some have been able to use abortion pill reversal to save their child’s life.
Black abortions saw a tiny decline, from 12,794 to 12,789 abortions. Any decline is welcome, however, as Black abortions remain high despite the decreasing overall abortion rates.
Teen abortions once again saw a decrease. In 1987, women under 20 accounted for 28.5% of abortions in Michigan. Today they account for 9%. Recently there has been an aging trend with abortion. In 2017, the 25-29 age group had the highest percentage of abortions, 31%. Women 30 and older had 29.3% of abortions and women 20-24 had 30.6%.
After reading through the 2017 report, there were some very odd numbers noticed this year. A huge chunk of abortion data was missing and uncategorized. Despite this, abortions with missing data were still used to calculate overall percentages in the report. Right to Life of Michigan staff had to spend extra time combing through the data and recalculating the numbers from the MDHHS to make sure that the statistics above were accurate.
For example, the repeat abortion rate according to the report’s summary is 55%, but the MDHHS included 1,720 abortions in that calculation for which they have no idea if the woman had a previous abortion or not. Using some simple math, we discovered the correct known repeat abortion rate is actually 52%, what we included above.
While none of the numbers were extremely off, bad statistics are bad statistics, and Right to Life of Michigan doesn’t do bad statistics. Also, abortion clinics are required to report these statistics by law. Right to Life of Michigan doesn’t look the other way on that, either.
It could be discouraging to see this slight uptick in numbers, but it should be an indication of how much harder we have to work to see an end to abortion. We have seen huge prolife victories the past year and a half with the election of President Trump, and with the nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. With upcoming elections in August and November, we have to make sure we elect prolife officials at all levels so we can pass more life-saving legislation and ensure our laws are being properly enforced.
Now is not the time to get complacent; long-term abortion declines only continue when we work to continue them.
