Where are the 2019 Ky. Abortion Statistics? HERE.

A visit to the website of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services and its Vital Statistics Branch brings into view links to “statistics.” The Services tab leads to the Abortion Requirements and Annual Data Reports heading and description:

All abortion providers must report each procedure as defined in KRS 311.720 to the Department for Public Health, Vital Statistics Branch. Reports must be received within 15 days of the end of the month in which the abortion occurs…

So, if these deaths are to be reported within 15 days as described, why is there no report yet for 2019?

The requirement is:

By Sept. 30 of each year, the Vital Statistics Branch will issue a public report on all data collected that calendar year per KRS 213.101, subsections (1) and (2).

So, for the 2019 calendar year, we can expect to see abortion statistics in September 2020. A lag.

BUT, thanks to a sidewalk counselor team that has stood watch at the EMW Clinic for many years, KRLA is provided with numbers of women entering the clinic each day, with special care taken to avoid counting the same person who enters on consecutive days. (In the current environment, this is a greater challenge, and with the opening of Planned Parenthood in March 2020, the count is unclear.)

You can find the 2019 numbers on the Media Releases page of this website.

KRLA also mails a hard copy of these statistics to numerous churches and to others who request it each month, again, thanks to volunteers and our donors— you.

Though there are some discrepancies between the “on-the-ground” count and the state report, the numbers are close, and the monthly report focuses us on the brute reality that lives are lost every week in our state to abortion, and not only Kentucky lives. There are out-of-state licenses in plain view.

In 2017, 906 of 3202 abortions were of “black” people, and in 2018, 974 of 3203 were. That is 28.3% and 30.4%, respectively. You may want to see the full report, by clicking on the years.

Oddly for each calendar year, 2017 and 2018, there were 3,202 and 3,203 abortions, respectively.

A strange coincidence or an error in the count? Or was there only one more abortion in 2018 than in 2017?

We are grateful that our Legislative Pro-life Caucus is on the job, and they care about these “statistics.”