“I’m here at this health care clinic to uplift the work that is happening in Minnesota as an example of what true leadership looks like,” Harris told reporters from the lobby of the clinic.
The vice president traveled to Minnesota for the sixth stop of her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour. She toured the Planned Parenthood facility and spoke with staff about reproductive rights. Her tour began in January in Wisconsin. She has also held events in California, Georgia, Michigan and Arizona.
“The reason I’m here is because this is a health care crisis,” Harris said. “Part of this health care crisis is the clinics like this that have had to shut down and what that has meant to leave no options with any reasonable geographic area for so many women who need this essential care.”
It is notable that Ms Harris has never had biological children of her own.
Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz said her family's "fertility journey was an incredibly personal and difficult experience" that they initially kept "largely to ourselves." Governor Walz suggested he "wouldn't have a family" without IUI, adding his "kids were born through that direct, that way." her husband said: "Thank God for IUI. My wife and I have two beautiful children." to MSNBC.
Gov. Tim Walz’s elevation as Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic running mate has led to wider awareness of his staunch support for abortion in his state — including a bill he signed into law last year that removed a requirement to try to save the life of a baby born alive after an attempted abortion.
A Minnesota law that had been on the books since 1976 required “responsible medical personnel” to use “all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice” to “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.”
The legislation Walz signed in May 2023 got rid of the word “preserve” and replaced the previous wording with a revised requirement “to care for the infant who is born alive.”
“The concern is that the law no longer requires that lifesaving measures be taken. It only requires ‘care.’ So the law as it’s now written could allow a baby to be left to die, even a baby who could be saved with appropriate lifesaving measures,” Paul Stark, communications director with the pro-life group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.
The same 2023 Minnesota law also removed a previous requirement to report to the state the deaths of aborted unborn babies 20 weeks’ gestation and older and stopped state funding for pro-life pregnancy centers.
In 2015, Minnesota enacted a bill called the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which required that the state Department of Health produce a report every year stating the number of babies born alive after an attempted abortion and what happened to them. (The law also restated previously existing language requiring “reasonable measures” to save the life of a baby born alive after an attempted abortion.)
During the eight years the law was in effect, the state’s health agency reported 24 babies born alive after an attempted abortion. (The breakdown by year is: 2015 (5), 2016 (5), 2017 (3), 2018 (3), 2019 (3), 2020 (0), 2021 (5), 2022 (0).)
All the babies died. Ten of the 24 cases involved a fatal fetal condition “incompatible with life,” according to the reports. Four babies were medically “pre-viable,” meaning they were deemed too underdeveloped to live on their own. Two were barely clinging to life: one in 2016 had “transient cardiac contractions” and another in 2017 had a low Apgar score, suggesting little chance of resuscitation.
Eight other cases were described in vaguer language. For seven of them, the reports say, “comfort care measures were provided as planned.” For a baby born alive in 2017, a state report says, “no specific steps taken to preserve life were reported.”
In January 2018, when Walz was a member of Congress, he apologized publicly for accidentally voting in favor of the federal Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act bill.
The bill, which passed the U.S. House 241-183 but didn’t get a vote in the U.S. Senate, sought to require that “any health care practitioner who is present when a child is born alive” after an attempted abortion “exercise the same degree of care as reasonably provided to any other child born alive at the same gestational age” and “ensure that such child is immediately admitted to a hospital.”
Walz explained in a tweet that he meant to vote No on the bill, but mistakenly voted Yes because he thought he was voting on an unrelated procedural measure.
“It was an honest mistake. I meant to vote NO, as I did on an identical bill last Congress. My apologies for the confusion,” Walz said in the tweet. “I’ll keep fighting for women's access to health care.” Walz indeed voted against a similar bill in September 2015.
Walz emphasized his support for abortion during his first (successful) run for governor in 2018. During a speech at his state party convention in June of that year, he ticked off a list of progressive stances he took as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, during a time when Nancy Pelosi was the U.S. House leader of the Democrats.
“And my record is so pro-choice Nancy Pelosi asked me if I should tone it down. I stand with Planned Parenthood,” Walz said.
In January 2023, Walz signed a bill into law declaring abortion a “fundamental right” in Minnesota that can be exercised without restrictions at all stages of pregnancy. In his State of the State speech in April 2023, Walz said the bill “established an ironclad right to reproductive freedom.”
Also last year, he successfully proposed abolishing state funding for pro-life pregnancy centers, which had been in place since 2005. The health bill that redefined the type of care required for infants born alive after an attempted abortion also removed public support for the centers.
This past March 14, almost five months before he became her running mate, Walz accompanied Harris when she visited an abortion facility in St. Paul, which is believed to be the first time a sitting president or vice president has visited a place where abortions are performed.
It wasn’t his first time in an abortion facility. He toured the same Planned Parenthood North Central States facility two months before, on Jan. 8, according to KTTC-TV. Before leaving, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Walz told a Planned Parenthood administrator, “We got your back.”
The Supreme Court’s June 24 5-4 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization struck America like a thunderbolt. The final decision flouted the court’s traditional adherence to judicial restraint and precedent. Polls show public approval of the court falling significantly, as the decision has been regarded as a product of politics rather than neutral decision-making.
Chief Justice Roberts’ efforts directed toward Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett were anticipated. Some anti-abortion advocates and conservative movement figures had feared that Roberts would sway either Kavanaugh or Barrett from the draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito that was an all-out rejection of Roe and women’s privacy rights.
Based on their previous statements and records, Alito and Kavanaugh, along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, disagreed with the high court’s past abortion-rights rulings.
President Trump had promised during his 2016 presidential campaign to appoint justices who would reverse Roe. President Donald Trump in January 2020 became the first sitting president to attend the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington, presenting himself as an unwavering advocate for limiting abortion access.
“Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House,” Trump said to an energized crowd. “And as the Bible tells us, each person is wonderfully made.”
In his brief remarks, Trump criticized Democrats and accused them of supporting abortion “up until the moment of birth.”
“They are coming after me because I am fighting for you and we are fighting for those that have no voice, and we will win because we know how to win,” the president said. “Together we are the voice for the voiceless.”
More than 16,000 additional babies were born in Texas in 2022 compared to 2021 after the state banned almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, according to a University of Houston analysis of 2022 fertility data.
Hispanic women saw the highest rate of growth and teen birth rates have increased after declines over the past 15 years.
As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, an estimated 2,500 more births happened in Tennessee in the first six months of 2023, according to an analysis by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. Tennessee Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, celebrated the report.
“Tennessee law is working as intended and has already saved the lives of thousands of unborn children,” wrote Tennessee Right to Life President Stacy Dunn. “We are grateful for the legislators who worked with us to make our law one of the strongest pro-life laws in the nation and who made sure it remained strong in the last legislative session.”
Using provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) natality data for the first half of 2023, Middlebury economics professor Caitlin Myers co-authored the analysis and found there was a 2.3% average increase in births in states where abortion was not restricted. In Tennessee, there was a 3.3% increase.
Former President Donald Trump praised himself and the Supreme Court for overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“What I did is something — for 52 years they’ve been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states. And through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that,” Trump said during the Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia. “Now I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. I believe strongly in it, Ronald Reagan did also and 85 percent of Republicans do too, exceptions, very important, but we were able to get it and now states are voting on it.”
Trump said he’s happy individual states are voting on abortion rights.
“I did a great service in doing it,” Trump said of overturning Roe. “It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it, and I give tremendous credit to those six justices.”
Abortion is on the ballot…again.
Editorial comments expressed in this column are the sole opinion of the writer.
