Minnesota State Wire

Some abortions in Minnesota are being underwritten by taxpayers.

A report generated by the Minnesota Department of Human Services indicated that Medicaid funded several thousand abortions in 2017.

“Minnesota taxpayers fund abortions for low-income women through Medicaid,” wrote Paul Stark, communications director at Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL), via email. “Practitioners of abortion have increasingly taken advantage of the availability of that funding.”

Stark wrote that taxpayers reimbursed providers of abortion services more than $1.06 million in 2017, the latest year for which data was available, for a record-high 4,356 abortions.

“We don't think taxpayer dollars should bankroll the killing of human beings in the womb,” Stark wrote. “Abortion isn't a public good, taxpayers shouldn't be forced to be part of it, and economically vulnerable women deserve better.”

The MinnPost wrote that Minnesota has basically become the lone provider of abortions in the Midwest.

“Minnesota has remained an outpost of reproductive rights, even as neighboring states have whittled away access to abortion through restrictive laws and ban attempts,” the news site reported.    

A 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court decision (Doe v. Gomez) ruled that low-income women could not be denied coverage for abortion procedures.  

“Doe v. Gomez also obligates the state – and thus, taxpayers – to pay for abortions for low-income women who receive state assistance, something not required by the U.S. Supreme Court,” stated the MCCL website.

Since 2011, tax-funded abortions at Planned Parenthood in Minnesota have risen by 197 percent, Stark wrote.

In 2017, Planned Parenthood performed 2,560 abortions with a reimbursement amount of $560,895. This included two Planned Parenthood locations in North Dakota and South Dakota.

In the same year, the Minnesota House voted to ban the use of public dollars to pay for abortions, but it never materialized politically.