ST. PAUL — The number of abortions funded by Minnesota taxpayers hit another all-time high in 2016, according to new data released by the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Taxpayers bankrolled a total of 4,321 abortions at a cost of $1.056 million.
"Minnesota's Court-imposed policy of tax-funded abortion allows the abortion industry to offer 'free' abortions to economically vulnerable women," said MCCL Executive Director Scott Fischbach. "This gives the industry an easy revenue stream, and it is taking full advantage—especially in the face of the long-term trend of declining overall abortions."
A 1995 state Supreme Court ruling, Doe v. Gomez, overturned Minnesota's law against funding elective abortion and required the state to pay for abortions for women receiving state assistance. Since then, taxpayers have reimbursed abortion practitioners close to $25 million for nearly 82,000 abortion procedure claims.
State-funded abortions have jumped 27 percent since 2013. A record-high 43.4 percent of Minnesota abortions are now funded by taxpayers.
Planned Parenthood, which continues to increase its dominance of the abortion market, relies heavily on taxpayer funding to grow its abortion numbers and revenue year after year. It performed a record-high 2,322 tax-funded abortions in 2016—a 13 percent increase over the previous year and a shocking 168 percent increase since 2011. For the first time, Planned Parenthood now performs over half (54 percent) of all abortions funded by the state. The group billed taxpayers a record-high $521,596 for these abortions in 2016.
Whole Woman's Health, Minnesota's second leading abortion practitioner, slightly increased its tax-funded abortion total to 990. Together, Planned Parenthood and Whole Woman's Health account for more than three-quarters of state-funded abortions.
"Planned Parenthood's use of our tax dollars for abortion inflates the number of abortions and costs the lives of many, many unborn children," concluded Fischbach. "It exploits the circumstances of low-income women who need real solutions, not abortion. And it makes every Minnesota taxpayer part of the injustice of abortion. This has to stop."
MCCL helped to pass legislation to stop taxpayer funding of abortion in 2011 and 2017, but both bills were vetoed by Gov. Mark Dayton.