Monday, July 18, 2005

$11 Million Industry

Remember "Safe, Legal and Rare"? The only part of that phrase we've maintained is the "legal" part. I don't think anyone imagined that it would actually turn into an industry with approximately 50% of it's funding coming from the taxpayers of Washington state.

The Medical Assistance Program recently sent out its annual figures on the State of Washington's Pregnancy-Related Expenditures (1988 - 2004) and courtesy Human Life of Washington here are the facts on state funding of abortion:

In 2004, statistics for DOH showed 27 abortions at an average cost of $353, reaching a total of $9,542 for the procedures paid for by the state. For DSHS and MAA, there were 14,165 abortion procedures covered at an average cost of $494, reaching a total of $7,001,498. The total from the two agencies combined in 2004 amounts to 14,192 abortion procedures costing the taxpayers of this state $7,011,040.

That's a little over $7 million that went to abortion providers in Washington State in 2004. This doesn't even account for the funds Planned Parenthood (the largest abortion provider in the world) receives from King County, the City of Seattle or the federal government.

One other thing to note is that while the state paid for 14,192 abortions last year the actual number of abortions in the state was about 25,000. That means abortion is roughly an $11 million a year business in this state with the taxpayers providing over half of all the money for this procedure. Is there any other industry in the state that is subsidized to such a degree?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Eleven million dollars...who would have thought that death was so expensive. The day that abortions are free (excluding post 9-11 for a snapshot of time) is the day that I will believe that the abortion industry truly believes it is good for women.