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MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, September 13, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — A pro-abortion organization is concerned that abortuaries are closing across the nation.
The Abortion Care Network (ACN), a coalition of independent abortion businesses, issued a report on the declining number of abortion centers. In the past five years, 145 independent “clinics” closed.
The ACN supports abortion businesses that are not affiliated with Planned Parenthood or a hospital chain. Of those, numbers went from 510 facilities in 2012 to 365 today, not counting the hundreds of Planned Parenthood centers.
On a homepage titled “Communities Need Clinics,” ACN wrote that abortion businesses are closing at an “alarming rate,” particularly independent ones, that often offer late-term abortions.
Significantly, ACN admitted the effectiveness of pro-life laws in lowering the number of abortions and abortion centers across the country. They also cited other factors impacting the closures, including the activism of sidewalk pro-lifers and the states that disallow Medicaid tax dollars from being used to pay for abortions.
“Unconstitutional 20-week bans and politically-motivated bans on certain safe medical procedures” are blamed on the dropping numbers. By “certain safe medical procedures” ACN apparently refers to dismemberment abortions, which pro-lifers call inhumane, and partial birth abortions, which pro-lifers call infanticide.
Ten unaffiliated abortion businesses closed so far this year and 19 last year. There were 33 closures in 2015, 23 the previous year, 40 in 2013, and 20 in 2012. Additionally, more than 20 Planned Parenthood affiliates closed so far this year.
Geographically, Texas had the most closures with 20, Michigan and California were next with 15 apiece, followed by Florida with 11 and Ohio with eight.
The ACN is especially concerned that late-term abortions are dwindling. “Clinics that provide abortion care beyond the first trimester of pregnancy are particularly vulnerable to closing,” the report stated. The pro-abortion organization explained that independent clinics are more likely to commit later abortions
“More than 80 percent of total closures shut … clinics that provide care after the first trimester,” ACN reported. “As independent abortion clinics close, abortion care becomes increasingly difficult to access as pregnancy progresses.”
Eight states, including Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming, have only one abortuary left. Kentucky could become the first state in the union to be abortion free if women’s safety laws are upheld in a current court challenge.
EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville is fighting for its business against a state law protecting women's health. Kentucky requires surgical abortion facilities to have the same basic safety equipment as any other surgical facility, and that abortionists have a contractual relationship with a local hospital in case a woman needs emergency care.
The American Civil Liberties Union claimed that the women’s safety laws are unnecessary and that closing EMW would cause “drastic” harm to Kentucky women.
Pro-lifers defend the women’s safety laws. Abortionists without admitting agreements with local hospitals “simply dump women experiencing medical emergencies from botched abortions onto hospital emergency rooms, which are often unprepared to handle complications that require an Ob/Gyn specialist,” Operation Rescue's Cheryl Sullenger explained. “This dangerously delays emergency care when moments can mean the difference between life and death.”
Not having such laws in place caused the death of 22-year-old LaKisha Wilson in 2014. She had an abortion on the third floor of Cleveland's Preterm clinic and bled to death waiting for a broken elevator — already too small for her to be intubated on her gurney — to get her out to an ambulance.
Similar pro-life laws in Texas were overruled last year by the U.S. Supreme Court because they might limit abortion “access.”
Those 2013 laws led to half the state's abortion businesses closing because of unsafe conditions, such as the ones that killed Lakisha Wilson. The legislation also resulted in a huge drop in abortions and more women giving life until the nation's highest court nixed it.
The ACN website displays posters to “celebrate abortion care.”
Read the ACN report here.