Abortion Extremism on the March in Minnesota

O n Tuesday, Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz signed legislation into law that declares “every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right” to “obtain an abortion, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise this fundamental right.”

The radical legislation creating a “fundamental right” to abortion contains no limitations at all based on how developed the child is and whether the child could survive outside the womb.

Before the bill was passed by state senate Democrats on a 34-33 party-line vote over the weekend, more than 60 amendments attempting to establish some limits on abortion were rejected.

As the MinnPost recently reported, during his 2022 reelection campaign, “Gov. Tim Walz suggested the viability standard still exists [in Minnesota law]. And at the time, Walz expressed support for that viability standard — real or imagined. The governor does not appear to stand by that assessment following his re-election.”

Republicans in the Minnesota legislature blasted Walz for abandoning his support of limiting abortions after viability. Alpha News reports that Minnesota state senate minority leader Mark Johnson and house minority leader Lisa Demuth wrote in a letter to Walz on Monday: “While running for re-election, you assured Minnesotans that you did not believe abortion should be permitted up-to-the-moment-of-birth, and instead supported ‘maintaining the timelines outlined by current law.’ Under current law, abortion is illegal in Minnesota after viability. If the health or life of the mother was in danger, late-term abortions must be performed in a hospital. The PRO Act allows abortion services far beyond these commonsense, consensus guidelines.”

Prior to enactment of the new law, the legal status of late-term abortion in the state was somewhat complicated. Minnesota’s existing abortion statute said that abortion was unlawful, except to preserve the mother’s life or health, when an unborn child is “potentially viable,” a term defined as “the second half of its gestation period.” That limitation on abortion of “potentially viable” unborn children was enjoined by a circuit-court ruling in 1976 as more restrictive than Roe’s viability standard. The broad undefined health exception in the statute appears to be a big loophole, but the requirement to perform a late abortion in a hospital was a serious limitation because ethical doctors would simply end a pregnancy after viability by delivering a live baby and attempting to save the child’s life. Laura Hermer, a professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, recently told MinnPost that even before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, “most abortion providers of whom I am aware in Minnesota simply proceed as if” the limitation on post-viability abortion is “still in effect.”

The passage of the new abortion law may embolden late-term abortionists to operate in Minnesota. “This law doesn’t just allow late abortion for medical emergencies or hard cases,” Cathy Blaeser of Minnesota Concerned Citizens for Life said in a statement. “It allows late abortion for any reason whatsoever, and it’s an open invitation to notorious late abortion practitioners to come to Minnesota to set up shop. Here in Minnesota, you don’t even need to be a doctor or have a licensed facility in order to perform abortions. The lack of guardrails to protect women and children is appalling.”

Teresa S. Collett, a professor of law at Minnesota’s University of St. Thomas, told National Review that it’s an “open question” how abortionists will react to the new statute because it does not explicitly repeal the statute that limited abortion after viability but was enjoined in 1976.

And it remains to be seen how state courts handle the issue.

In July, a judge in Ramsey County, home to St. Paul, issued a ruling striking down Minnesota’s long-standing abortion regulations regarding parental notice, informed consent, a 24-hour waiting period, and a requirement that some abortions be performed by physicians.

Collett noted that Democrats in the Minnesota state legislature don’t want to leave anything to chance and have introduced two more bills that would explicitly repeal “every abortion statute, every regulation of abortion in the state of Minnesota as well as our born-alive bill” protecting infants who survive attempted abortions.