By Chris Gast, Right to Life of Michigan Education Coordinator

Last week, details from the 2020 census made news everywhere. The population count is monumentally important for a variety of critical public policies.

Of particular focus in this decade’s census are the racial and ethnic numbers. The diversification of America was the top media takeaway in practically every single newscast.

Something is missing from the discussion, though. To be exact, approximately 9.4 million Americans including 248,568 Michiganders, are missing from the 2020 census. Those are how many abortions were reported since the last census in 2010.

Once again, Michigan is losing a congressional seat, harming our influence in Congress. It turns out Michigan only needed an additional 5,692 people to keep our power in the U.S. House. Now, Michigan’s redistricting commission will be tasked with redrawing lines to erase a district, likely in the Saginaw Bay region, which along with the Upper Peninsula and Detroit were the biggest losers in the census.

In the last decade there were 4,807 abortions in Saginaw County and 1,362 abortions in Bay County, alone making the difference in losing a Congressional seat, potentially in that area.

A staggering 50 of 83 counties in Michigan lost population between the 2010 and 2020 censuses. Had unborn children been protected in law, several of those counties would have actually grown: Antrim, Calhoun, Clare, Lenawee, Midland, St. Clair, St. Joseph, Van Buren, and Wayne counties.

Wayne County is the epicenter of abortions in Michigan, accounting for nearly 40% of the abortions in the state. The city of Detroit saw a massive loss of 74,666 people—more than a tenth of the population. Most of that population loss was due to abortion. In the last decade, there were 60,051 abortions performed on Detroit residents. As the children of the city bleed to death in local abortion facilities, the city continues bleeding as they struggle to keep even a single resident on some blocks.

Much of this population loss is because of the extremely disparate abortion rates in Black communities. The 2020 census showed an actual decrease of 23,783 Black residents in Michigan from 2010. There were 121,927 reported Black abortions in that time. While Michigan and America may be diversifying as a whole, abortion is diminishing the Black population—now less than 14% of the state. If unborn children were protected in law, the Black population would have grown in Michigan.

Abortions certainly played a part in the decrease of White residents, which fell by 358,146. There were 109,153 reported White abortions in the last decade, which doesn’t cover the difference. But look at this comparison: Whites are now 73.9% of the state’s population and had 109,153 abortions in the last decade; Blacks are now 13.7%—less than a fifth of the White population—yet Black women had nearly 13,000 more abortions.

Why are all the people who cheer diversification so completely silent about this deadly disparity?

There’s one last number worth considering, and it will affect us all. While surely everyone can understand how Detroit’s population losses are slowly destroying the city, the same thing will eventually happen everywhere in Michigan—and across America. While the total population continues to increase slowly, eventually that trend will reverse.

In 2010, there were more than 2.3 million Michiganders under the age of 18. In 2020, there were only 2.1 million children in Michigan. While Michigan’s population slightly increased, the number of children declined 7.7%. In America as a whole, the number of children declined 1.4%.

The population is only increasing because of immigration and advances in modern medicine enabling older people to live longer. Those trends can only paper over our demographic disaster for so long. Already, nations like Japan, South Korea, Russia, and China are facing population decline as an economic emergency. Birth rates are falling dramatically, and yet we continue taking the lives of millions of unborn children every year.

Every day, Michigan gets a little older and grayer. Every day, we ask more and more from our younger generations to support their parents and grandparents. A majority of our counties slip further towards economic irrelevance or a slow-motion catastrophe. The Motor City—the Arsenal of Democracy—became known for its machines, but sadly no longer has the people needed to keep the lights on in many city blocks.

While some are willing to face these hard truths, fewer still are willing to address the fact that Michigan’s future is being killed every day in our state’s abortion facilities. Governor Whitmer may believe abortion is “life-sustaining,” but the numbers prove otherwise for our great state.

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