Latest data has Kansas’ abortion rate down, Sedgwick County’s up

The number of Kansans having an abortion dropped again in 2019, continuing a 20-year mostly downward trend that has also played out across the country.

Meanwhile, the number of Sedgwick County residents having abortions has trended up.

Those on opposing sides of the abortion issue disagree on what is behind the drop in Kansas and across the country. One side says contraceptives led to the decline; the other partly attributes it to fetal education.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s 2019 preliminary report, released in 2020, shows Kansas residents had 3,543 of the 6,916 reported abortions in the state in 2019. It’s the third-lowest year in data going back to 1971 — the lowest year was 2016, with 3,439, followed by 2017, with 3,450.

Kansas women received out-of-state abortions 22 times in 2019, the data shows.

Sedgwick County

The number of Sedgwick County residents having an abortion was at a 10-year high in 2019, with 934. During the past decade, Sedgwick County surpassed Johnson County for the most abortions in 2018 and 2019.

While Sedgwick County accounts for roughly 17.5% of the state’s population, county residents made up more than 26% of Kansans having abortions in the state.

Kansans For Life director of government relations Jeanne Gawdun says she believes Sedgwick County’s increase could be due to ease of access, as the county has two of the state’s four abortion clinics.

Kansas data

The 2019 data shows 3,373 of the abortions performed in Kansas, or nearly 49%, were for people from out of state.

The 3,373 was the lowest number since 1990 — although a few recent years came close. The highest number of out-of-state residents having abortions in Kansas was 7,736 in 1972.

The 6,916 total abortions of in-state and out-of-state residents was the fifth-fewest in data going back to 1971 — 1986, 1987, 2016 and 2017 were lower. The highest was 12,612 in 1973.

Out-of-staters coming to Kansas

Missouri residents accounted for roughly 94% of the out-of-state residents having abortions in Kansas.

The thousands of Missourians coming to Kansas for an abortion could be because the Kansas City area has two of the four abortion clinics in Kansas and Missouri’s only clinic is in St. Louis, on the east side of the state.

The 2020 data could show even more people from out of state coming to Kansas for an abortion.

Trust Women, a reproductive rights organization that provides abortions in Wichita and Oklahoma City, saw an increase in women seeking its services after Texas and Oklahoma closed abortion clinics during the pandemic, according to founder and CEO Julie Burkhart.

The Wichita clinic performed around 1,150 abortions last year and has performed 1,860 abortions through Dec. 17 this year, according to figures provided to The Eagle.

National data

On the national level, despite continued population growth, the number of abortions has been mostly dropping since the 1990s, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights.

Gawdun, with Kansans for Life, said Guttmacher has the most accurate data available, but disagrees with how the organization interprets it.

Guttmacher is the only entity that strives to count all abortions in the U.S., making inquiries of individual providers, according to The Associated Press. Federal data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, excludes data from a few states, including California.

Guttmacher reported 862,320 abortions in 2017, the latest year available and the second-lowest behind 1973, in which 744,610 were reported.

Data is not available for all years since the Guttmacher Institute only compiles the information when funding is available.

Reason for the drop

Gawdun said “reasonable regulations” have aided a drop in Kansas abortions.

Those regulations include a ban on abortions after 22 weeks into a pregnancy and a 24-hour waiting period after women have been told the risks related with the procedure.

Fetal education and seeing efforts from abortion rights activists, such as New York’s expansion of abortion rights last year, have pushed people away from having abortions nationwide, she said.

“People are appalled by the extremism by some of these states to have absolutely no protection for the unborn child,” she said.

Burkhart said abortion opponents use deception to keep women from having abortions.

Legislation under former Gov. Sam Brownback required abortion clinics to provide information with “anti-choice language in it” that was used to “sway people from having an abortion,” she said.

She attributed the nationwide decline to contraceptives.

Gawdun pointed to a Guttmacher study that showed about half of women seeking abortions used a contraceptive the month before they became pregnant.

“When the contraceptive fails, the women can come back and have an abortion,” she said.

Condoms were the most common contraceptive reported in the study. Twenty-four percent of the women reported that a condom was used; followed by 13% who said they used birth control pills.

Condoms are considered to be one of the least effective methods for preventing pregnancy, according to the CDC.

“A person making a sweeping generalization such as ‘contraceptives don’t work’ is a disingenuous attempt to spread disinformation,” Mandy Culbertson, Planned Parenthood Great Plains’ director of communications and marketing, said in an email.

‘Decimating the Black population’

Gawdun, pointing to disproportionate rates of minorities having abortions nationwide, also questioned the motives of Planned Parenthood, which has locations in Wichita and Overland Park.

White women accounted for 53.9% of abortions, Black women for 23.6% and Hispanic women for 14.6%, according to the 2019 Kansas data.

U.S. Census estimates show people who are white account for roughly 86% of the population in Kansas and about 83% in Missouri, where roughly 45% of the abortion patients came from; people who are Hispanic made up about 12% and 4% in the respective states; and people who are Black represented nearly 6% and 12% in those states.

“If all lives matter of course, but if you care about Black lives, you have to be concerned by this,” Gawdun said. “You have to be concerned about what the abortion industry is doing, how it is decimating the Black population.”

She said Planned Parenthood locations are mostly in minority neighborhoods.

Culbertson denied that assertion. She said that as of January 2019 56% of Planned Parenthood locations were in rural, medically underserved or health professional shortage areas.

“The ability to access healthcare in this country is very much determined by where you live and how much money you make. And in this country, that also means it is effectively tied to the color of your skin” she said in a phone interview. “(Black people) have worse rates of unintended pregnancies and it’s because of things that make it difficult or impossible to access healthcare such as poverty, lack of transportation, lack of paid sick leave, lack of childcare, lack of insurance.”

By the numbers

• The 20-24 age group had the highest number of abortions of any age group, accounting for 2,156 abortions, or about 31% of the total.
• There were 13 abortions in the 45 and up age group.
• There were 141 abortions in the groups that included age 17 or younger.
• Mifepristone, a drug that blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy, was the most common way abortions occurred in 2019. It was used roughly 64% of the time in abortions reported by clinics.

This story was originally published January 2, 2021 at 5:07 AM.