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State health officials didn’t attempt to explain why they recorded 5 percent more abortions in 2006, or 14,065 procedures. The rate also climbed — to 11.9 per 1,000 girls and women between the ages of 15 and 44, compared with 11.3 in 2005.
The number of abortions nationwide has been declining since the 1990s, although the most recent figures are several years old. Minnesota’s number peaked at 19,028 in 1980 and has fallen most years since. Physicians who provide abortions are required to report each procedure to the state Health Department under a 1998 law that also mandated the annual report to lawmakers.
The law doesn’t require the agency to analyze the numbers, so it doesn’t. But advocates on both sides of the abortion issue had theories.
Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life blamed Planned Parenthood, the state’s biggest provider of abortions and family planning services. Scott Fischbach, who heads the anti-abortion group, said Planned Parenthood’s new express clinics in three Twin Cities suburbs were responsible for a 16 percent increase in abortions among minors.
“There’s no other change that’s happened in the state other than Planned Parenthood preying on teens and targeting and marketing to teens, much like Big Tobacco has done,” Fischbach said.
Planned Parenthood’s president and CEO called the claims “ludicrous.”
Abortions aren’t provided at the clinics in Woodbury, Apple Valley and Eden Prairie.
Abortions are up because women are having a harder time getting affordable birth control, said Sara Stoesz, who heads Planned Parenthood Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota. The group provided 3,660 abortions in Minnesota in 2006, according to the report.
“The one thing we know causes abortion is unintended pregnancy, and there is a direct link between unintended pregnancy and lack of affordable birth control,” Stoesz said.
State funding for family planning services hasn’t increased in recent years, though prices have climbed. Lawmakers this year approved a $2.3 million funding bump for birth control over the next two years.
The top reason given for abortions in the report was “does not want children at this time.”
