Minnesota has reported a 2% increase in abortions since 2019, which may well be the tipping point if more women travel to the state from places where abortions are currently or soon will be illegal. .
The 10,136 elective abortions in 2021 were driven by the growing use of drugs, which for the second straight year exceeded surgical procedures, according to Friday’s annual report from the Minnesota Department of Health.
The long-term trend has been downward since Minnesota reported 19,028 abortions in 1980, and state advocates have praised goal setting and family planning training, among other efforts to reduce unwanted teenage pregnancies.
A landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, however, could turn the tide, as it removed constitutional protection for abortion procedures nationwide and allowed other states to limit them. The trigger laws have since banned abortions in South Dakota and will ban most abortions in North Dakota on July 28. A Wisconsin ban is also precariously in effect.
“We’re hiring as quickly as we can to recruit staff,” said Sarah Stoesz, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, which expects a 25% increase in abortions at its Minnesota clinics.
Minnesota abortion statistics are released on July 1 each year, often without announcement and with modest attention after the legislative session. This year, the numbers were dropped a week after the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade, and in the run-up to Minnesota’s gubernatorial race, which has elevated abortion to a key election issue.
Governor Tim Walz on Twitter this week called Republican challenger Scott Jensen “a dangerous far-right extremist who would ban abortion and take Minnesota back to the 1950s.” Jensen countered that “Walz is the extremist” and questioned whether his level of abortion permissiveness was “out of step with most Minnesotans.”
The 2021 annual report also corrects errors in the 2020 report and changes the outlook for the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on abortions.
A year ago, the state reported an 8% decline, and advocates speculated that the pandemic had either reduced unplanned sexual encounters or discouraged women from having abortions. The Star Tribune at the time found that the report underreported abortions provided by Whole Woman’s Health, which moved its clinic from Minneapolis to Bloomington.
Friday’s update showed that abortions actually increased in Minnesota from 9,922 in 2019 to 10,339 in 2020 before declining slightly in 2021.
The reasons for the abortions become less clear as a third of the women did not know or refused to answer on the required medical forms. Half of the women said they did not want children at the time of their abortion while 13% cited economic reasons. This is well below the 37% of 2007 at the start of the US economic recession.
Whole Woman’s Health closed its clinic last year, but reopened under a new organizational structure in February and expects its proximity to Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport will cause an influx of travel medicine patients.
The number of clinics named in the state report fell from seven to four over the past decade, though unnamed independent doctors performed about 7% of abortions last year. Planned Parenthood, based in St. Paul, saw its share of abortions in Minnesota rise from 33% in 2011 to 71% in 2021.
“It shouldn’t just be on the backs of Planned Parenthood and independent abortion clinics in Minnesota to support the influx of people who will need our care,” Stoesz said. “Hopefully we’ll start to see other OBGYN practices and health systems stepping into the breach.”
Alternatives have emerged such as Just The Pill, a telehealth provider that mails abortion medication to eligible patients in Minnesota and three western US states. It provided 53 abortions at the end of 2020 but more than 1,300 in 2021, according to the provider’s internal data. A spokesperson said patient demand has been “frenzied” since the Supreme Court ruling.
Abortions by drugs such as mifepristone increased in Minnesota from 3,522 in 2016 to 6,157 in 2021, while surgical procedures decreased from 9,128 to 3,977 over the same period.
Over the past decade, abortions have declined among Minnesota women under age 29, but increased among older women. A program in Hennepin County appears to be having an influence, teaching teenage girls to set goals for their future and think about how unplanned pregnancies might affect them.
Minnesota has seen similar rates of decline over the past two decades in residents undergoing abortions and women traveling from out of state for procedures. Residents accounted for 90% of abortions while 6% involved Wisconsin women.
Abortions had also declined over time in the border states of Wisconsin and Iowa, although the number in Iowa increased by 42% from 2018 to 2020. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said hired private lawyers last week to try to restore abortion restrictions that have been bound by court rulings.
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