Michigan’s latest and last abortion report: Abortion increases 3.7%

• Michigan data indicates that abortions overall increased for the seventh straight year in 2023
• Under the 2023 Reproductive Health Act, Michigan providers no longer will be required to collect detailed abortion data from their patients
• Out-of-state abortions accounted for 1 in 11 of all procedures

Michigan abortion providers performed more than 31,000 abortions in 2023 — the highest number in three decades and the seventh consecutive year of increases.

More Michigan patients are seeking abortions, helping to drive the numbers. But the 3.7% increase is a reflection, too, of the continued demand from out-of-state patients traveling to Michigan for abortion, according to state data released late last week.

Of 31,241 abortions performed in Michigan last year, 2,750, or nearly 9%, were sought by out-of-state residents — 11 fewer than last year. Of those 2,227 were residents from Ohio and Indiana.

The latest detailed data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services also will be the last.

Under Michigan’s Reproductive Health Act — a law signed late last year and effective this past February — abortion clinics are no longer required to report details to the state about the tens of thousands of abortions they perform. Those details included patient age ranges, marital status, gestational ages, types of procedures and any complications.

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According to this last report:

• Overall, 31,241 abortions were reported in Michigan in 2023 compared with 30,120 reported the previous year. That’s 1,132 more abortions and it’s higher than any other year since 1994.

Still, abortions last year were down 36.4% compared to 1987, the year the state logged its highest number of abortions: 49,098.

• Most abortions — 28,491 — were performed on Michigan residents. 

In fact, the rate of abortion among Michigan residents has been inching upward to 16.5 abortions in 2023 for every 1,000 Michigan women 15 to 44 years old. That’s the highest rate since 1989 when the state reported the same rate.

• Of all abortions, 17,164 — or nearly 55% — were done by pill.
• Of all patients, 757 were under 18 years old.
• Of all patients, nearly 9 in 10 had been pregnant 12 weeks or less.
• Of Michigan patients, about 1 in 10 were married.

A haven state

The increase in demand from out-of-state residents began in 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and the federal constitutional right to an abortion. That set off a scramble among some states to limit or all-out ban abortion.

As Michigan continued to make abortion available, eventually establishing state constitutional protection under Prop 3 later in 2022 and the Reproductive Health Act last year, some predicted Michigan would become a “haven state” for patients in states where abortion was banned.

And  appointment requests surged for a time. The number of out-of-state residents seeking abortions in Michigan jumped from 1,665 in 2021 to 2,761 in 2022.

But many states, notably Ohio, have since reopened access. Michigan’s southern neighbor limited abortion to six weeks gestation in 2019, but voters in November 2023 — like Michigan voters the year before — enshrined protections in the state constitution. For now at least, abortion is legal in Ohio until 22 weeks gestation.

For people in other states which severely restrict abortion, Michigan is not an easy drive. A patient from a southern state can stop in Ohio for the procedure instead of continuing the drive north, and a patient in Wisconsin or Indiana may choose a Chicago clinic, said Renee Chelian, founder of Northland Family Planning Centers, which operates three clinics in southeast Michigan.

Most of the out-of-town patients her clinics see are “people who have been referred here or who have relatives in Michigan, so that they have a place to stay,” she said. 

For five years before 2022, out-of-state residents made up between 3.1% and 5.5% of the state’s abortions. In 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe case, out-of-state residents made up 9.1% and this past year, 8.8% of abortions in Michigan.

The end to detailed data

The 2023 data is the final, detailed view of abortion in Michigan.

Michigan now becomes one of a handful of states that no longer collect those details, according to Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights research group that uses state-level data to track trends.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collects state-by-state data, but it’s dated and based on voluntary reports. California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey do not submit data.

Since the 1970s, Guttmacher has provided national data, too. It switched formats last year in response to the flurry of state law changes after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022. 

But like the previous reports, the newer Monthly Abortion Provision Study, also is based on voluntary responses and, to an extent, estimates. 

Additionally, Guttmacher doesn’t collect information on complications — a data point that’s crucial to patient safety, abortion advocates noted.

Some abortion opponents had argued that data collection was one of the few remaining patient safeguards. Dr. Catherine Stark, a long-time ob-gyn, told lawmakers last year that the data provides quality control by, for example, letting the public know about abortion providers with high numbers of surgical complications or “violations of care.” 

According to health experts and the state’s data, complications are rare. Immediate complications were reported in 16 cases last year, and in a total of 15 cases between 2020-2022, the state noted in its summary of the 2023 data.

Others, including Lynn Sutfin, spokesperson for the state health department, said the data as medically unnecessary, burdensome and stigmatizing for those trying to get abortions. The new law removed the reporting “in line with most other medical procedures,” Sutfin told Bridge in an earlier story.