March 14, 2024 | Press Release
MINNEAPOLIS — Today Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to visit a Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Minnesota. The visit comes after the Minnesota legislature passed an abortion-up-to-birth law last year and as it may soon push to enshrine unlimited abortion in the state Constitution.
“The vice president's visit shows the Biden administration's full-blown devotion to extreme abortion policies,” said MCCL Co-Executive Director Cathy Blaeser. “Minnesota is an outlier after enacting an abortion-up-to-birth law and abolishing a program that supported pregnant women. That’s why Vice President Harris came here. But unlimited abortion harms women and children. Most Minnesotans don’t want what Harris, Biden, and DFL lawmakers are selling.”
Two different polls (from KSTP/Survey USA and Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11) show that only 30 percent of Minnesotans favor abortion without limits, the state’s current policy.
Lawmakers in 2023 enacted the PRO Act, which created a right to abortion up to birth in state law, and repealed a wide range of longstanding abortion-related policies, including protection for the lives of born-alive infants, the Woman’s Right to Know informed consent law, and the Positive Alternatives Act that provided grants to programs supporting pregnant women.
“Minnesotans don’t want to be known for abortion tourism. We don’t want to be the place where no babies are safe and where mothers too often don’t get the support and options they need,” said Blaeser. “But that’s where DFL lawmakers have taken us, and now they want to go even further.”
This year, a proposed version of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) would enshrine unlimited abortion in the state Constitution. The number of abortions in Minnesota increased 20 percent in 2022 (the latest year for which state data is available) and early indications point to an even larger jump in 2023.