Reports Show Arkansas Exporting Abortions to Neighboring States
This week the Arkansas Department of Health released its reports on abortions performed in the state during 2014. We’ve already written about some of the statistics from this year’s reports.
According to the reports, for the first time since 2006 the number of abortions performed in Arkansas went up last year, with 4,273 abortions performed in 2014. That’s an increase of 541 abortions–unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected; despite being on a downward trend, abortion totals fluctuate from year to year.
In reading the report, we noticed something interesting: The number of abortions performed on Arkansans last year (i.e. on women who reside in Arkansas) increased only slightly–from 3,205 in 2013 to 3,332 in 2014–while the number of abortions performed on women from out-of-state increased dramatically–from 527 in 2013 to 941 in 2014.
In other words, much of the increase in abortion in 2014 was due to women from other states obtaining abortions in Arkansas.
What’s more, as we looked at abortion data going back to the year 2000, we discovered that roughly 15% of the abortions performed in Arkansas were actually on women from out-of-state, and 1 in 5 women who had an abortion in Arkansas in 2014 was from out-of-state. Here is the data: