Progressive petri dish: Abortion laws meant to help Minnesotans backfire
Barnini Chakraborty
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The Washington Examiner went to Minnesota following news that the state’s Democrats, known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, had fast-tracked one of the most progressive agendas in state history. What we found was a struggling Republican Party, angry small business owners, and a complete stonewall from Democrats. In this series, the Washington Examiner takes a look at broken promises lawmakers made, how Republicans are trying to control the carnage, and the unintended consequences of some of the bills passed, including one that seems to do more harm than good for women in Minnesota seeking abortions.
ST. PAUL, Minnesota — Minnesota may have led the nation in enshrining abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but a new law that expands access by opening state borders and welcoming anyone seeking the procedure has hamstrung women living in the Midwestern state and in desperate need of care.
Minnesotans must now compete with out-of-state patients for limited resources, including scheduling an appointment, seeing a doctor, getting an ultrasound, and having the procedure, as well as aftercare, forcing some to travel hours out of state for services.
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“Being the only state that has legal abortion in the upper Midwest, we have an influx of people that are coming to our state to seek care,” Abena Abraham, campaign director for UnRestrict Minnesota, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s harder to get some second-trimester appointments, and we are seeing Minnesotans having to travel outside to access care.”
The state had been seeing a gradual decline in abortions but witnessed a 180-degree turn last year.
Abortions have increased by 20% this year, driven in part by an increase in women traveling from other states at a rate providers haven’t seen in at least four decades, according to a recent report from the Minnesota Department of Health.
Last year, more than 16% of the 12,175 abortions performed came from women traveling from other states. Of that number, 1,714 came from border states, while 290 others came from places as far away as Texas.
Planned Parenthood saw a 25% jump in abortions compared to the 10 months before and after the Supreme Court ruling and is planning to increase its capacity at clinics in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Mankato, Ruth Richardson, chief executive of Planned Parenthood North Central States, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Paulina Briggs, executive director of the WE Health Clinic, an abortion provider in the port city of Duluth, told Al Jazeera that providers had been bracing for the increase. In 2022, the clinics performed 568 abortions compared with 462 in 2021.
“A bit less expected is where those patients were coming from,” she said. “Even pre-Dobbs [the landmark case that overturned Roe], we were the only abortion provider for hundreds of miles in any direction for northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and the upper peninsula of Michigan. That didn’t change after Dobbs, but what did change was patients traveling from the Twin Cities [Minneapolis and St. Paul].”
Duluth and Minneapolis-St. Paul is more than a two-hour drive.
Tammi Kromenaker, director of Red River Women’s Clinic, said she’s seen people from Texas and Nebraska but suspects “there are more patients from out of state who may just not be telling us where they’re coming from.”
Abraham, who called the campaign for increased access to abortion the “fight of her life,” told the Washington Examiner she knows there’s “a need for people to access ultrasounds and free pregnancy tests” and that her organization plans to push for more resources.
“We’ve been really excited with the progress we’ve been able to make this past session and hope that with sustained work and continued organizing that that will continue to move things along in the right direction,” she said.
Abraham’s nonprofit group is led by a multiracial coalition of LGBT advocates, faith communities, doctors, lawyers, organizers, healthcare clinics, and doulas. UnRestrict Minnesota’s agenda is to protect, expand, and destigmatize access to abortion care in the state through education, advocacy, and the law. While the group’s current focus is Minnesota, its goal is to expand abortion services to other states to ensure sole bodily autonomy.
Fourteen states across the country have banned abortions outright or placed severe restrictions on them following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. Georgia, for example, banned abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, a window of time when a lot of women don’t even know they are pregnant. In other states, the fight over access has been moved to the courtroom, where advocates have sued the government over laws that place limitations on the procedure.
In July, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) signed a strict abortion ban that was immediately challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood, which sued in Polk County. Three days later, District Court Judge Joseph Seidlin put the ban on hold while a larger case against it makes its way through the court system.
In Minnesota, lawmakers and advocates moved quickly to expand access by adding legal protections for providers and patients.
In January, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) signed the PRO Act, short for Protect Reproductive Actions, which established that “every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health” and included abortion and contraceptives.
“After last year’s landmark election across the country, we’re the first state to take legislative action to put these protections in place,” he said during a bill signing ceremony in which he was joined by more than 100 lawmakers, abortion providers, and advocates who worked to pass the bill.
Minnesota already had abortion protections in place under the 1995 state Supreme Court decision Doe v. Gomez, which said the state constitution protected abortion rights. Last summer, a district court judge ruled several abortion restrictions lawmakers had passed in earlier sessions were unconstitutional. Even so, advocates and lawmakers said the PRO Act provided a new layer of protection for women should the makeup of the state court change as it did on the high court. Lawmakers also passed legislation that would shield those seeking or providing abortions in Minnesota from laws in other states banning it.
They were able to pass abortion bills with relative ease following a slate of midterm wins last year. Minnesota’s Democrats, known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor-Party, control four of the state’s eight U.S. House seats, both of its U.S. Senate seats, as well as both chambers of the state legislature and all other statewide offices, including the governor’s mansion.
UnRestrict Minnesota has been laying the “groundwork to elect reproductive justice champions and pass proactive policy” by “expanding beyond traditional electoral strategies by engaging young people and LGBTQ+ and BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) communities in key districts where candidates in tough races could help us win a pro-reproductive freedom majority in the state House and Senate.”
GOP leaders told the Washington Examiner that during the midterm elections, Democrats weaponized abortion and falsely claimed Republicans wanted to repeal the right as mandated in the state constitution.
Minnesota Republican Party Chairman David Hann said candidates were vilified for wanting to put “commonsense” restrictions in place, such as parental notification.
“If you’re going to get a tattoo in Minnesota and you’re 18 or under, you’ve got to get parental permission, but if you’re 13 years old and you want to get an abortion, you can do it without your parents’ permission, and [abortion providers] will keep it secret from them,” he said. “This is ‘crazytown,’ and it’s a view held by a very small number of people who look at abortion as the most important right. Our position is that we think all life deserves to be protected, but we also recognize there are hard choices that need to be made, and what we want is a reasonable regiment on abortion that reflects where most people in the state are.”
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For most abortion advocates in the state, meeting Republicans halfway isn’t an option.
“Our middle ground is that abortion should be legal and accessible and affordable to everybody and that it’s not the place of lawmakers to decide what decisions people make around their body,” Abraham said. “We believe in sole bodily autonomy, and so if the middle ground isn’t that people have control over their bodies and they get to make decisions that are necessary for them, then we’re not interested.”