Will abortion rights supporters propel Minnesota DFL candidates to victory?

Earlier in the year DFL lawmakers were debating whether to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would combine an equal rights amendment with abortion protections. While the measure likely would have passed the Senate after already passing the House, there were skeptics.

Sure, an amendment might attract DFL-leaning voters to the polls. In states where abortion-related measures were voted on, the reproductive rights side not only won but the campaigns helped Democratic candidates. But it also would be expensive and time consuming in an already full-plate election.

Adherents of the latter position stressed that abortion would be on the ballot regardless of whether a constitutional amendment was there.

“Abortion as an issue will be on the ballot,” said state DFL Chair Ken Martin earlier this year. “The extreme positions of the Republicans running for president will drive the electorate, with or without a ballot amendment.”

Those who preached delay prevailed. Legislative leaders first sought to put off a public vote until 2026. Ultimately, the amendment was not voted on in the state Senate. Now, to fulfill Martin’s prediction, the DFL and its affiliates have launched well-funded and well-staffed campaigns to remind voters that the issue that exploded with the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade is still raging.

“You don’t have to look much further than the ads and the mailers and the conversation that is happening, both in this state and around the county. It’s very clear that abortion rights are front and center in this election,” Martin said last week. “It’s one of the issues that continues to animate the electorate. In almost every legislative race it is a critical difference between our DFL candidates and the Republicans. Of course we’re highlighting that.”

State voters are thinking about abortion just as they were in 2022 when the elected the DFL trifecta, said Tim Stanley, executive director of the Planned Parenthood of Minnesota Political Action Fund. “We don’t need to do much to magnify that abortion rights are on the ballot. All we need to do is make sure they know which candidates support a woman’s right to choose and make sure they get to the polls.

“That’s our assignment,” Stanley said.

In 2023, Minnesota DFL lawmakers adopted — and Gov. Tim Walz signed — laws that remove most government restrictions on abortion, instead opting to leave the decision to pregnant women and medical providers.

It also shielded from prosecution under other state’s laws women who travel to Minnesota for abortions and medical providers who conduct abortions. It changed what had been called “born-alive” provisions adopted in 2015 and reduced the amount of information abortion providers are required to provide the state.

While a 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court decision found that the state constitution’s privacy provisions protect abortion access and that state medical assistance cannot be denied to women seeking abortions, lawmakers sought to remove from state law provisions that said otherwise. The court is now made up of seven DFL-appointed justices, but the constitutional amendment would prevent any future court from reaching different conclusions about abortion rights.

As a candidate for vice president, Walz has characterized the state’s position on abortion as “mind your own business.”

“In Minnesota, we are ranked first in health care for a reason. We trust women. We trust doctors,” Walz said during the vice presidential debate.

Related: Out of state abortions rise in first post-Roe annual health report 

“Minnesotans have proven in election after election, in legislative session after legislative session, that at no point in pregnancy do they believe that politicians are in a better place to make health care decisions than the person in question,” Stanley said.

Planned Parenthood is just one part of the DFL’s campaign apparatus but is the one focused on reproductive rights. It also is the organization that concentrates its efforts on direct voter contact via digital messaging and door knocking (though it does sponsor some advertisements on streaming platforms).

The state Planned Parenthood political committee will spend $1.4 million this election, a massive amount not just compared to what anti-abortion groups will spend but compared to other political committees. That is true across the country as organizations supporting abortion access and engaging in ballot measure campaigns are outraising opponents 8-to-1.

Stanley said 2024 is a different election because there are relatively few contested races to take part in — the presidential election, the special state Senate race in District 45 and a dozen-or-so state House races.

Related: A month before Election Day, these 16 Races to Watch could determine Minnesota House control

“There’s a smaller number of districts and there’s going to be a lot of concentration from a lot of groups, not only us,” he said. “But direct voter contact is our forte. We go door-to-door, we make the calls, we send the texts, we do massive digital ad campaigns, making sure people know from the top of the ticket to the bottom of the ticket who the Planned Parenthood endorsed candidates are.”

Stanley said the organization concentrates on already identified supporters of abortion access but also tries to broaden those lists by approaching those who, based on their demographics, are likely to be in agreement.

“If Jane is with us, then Jodie her neighbor is probably with us too,” he said.

Abortion rights has been a major focus of the presidential campaign as well. A national 60-stop “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour” with top Democratic personalities, including Minnesota First Lady Gwen Walz and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, made two stops in Minnesota in Duluth and Minnetonka in early October. The campaign has had 17 events in Minnesota focusing on reproductive rights since late June.

Counter messaging

Reproductive rights in “all/most cases” have majority support in the U.S. and in Minnesota. Rather than campaign for a ban or strict limits on when abortions can be obtained, opponents here and nationally have focused instead on the details of adopted or proposed laws.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the state’s leading anti-abortion organization, has sponsored digital ads that make both points. One claims the new state law removed what were called born-alive provisions that required a second physician to be on hand for third trimester abortions and that all steps be taken to “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.”

Related: Some DFLers want to ensure there are no legal restrictions on late-term abortions in Minnesota 

The MCCL ads feature a woman who survived an abortion procedure. Another features a woman who gave birth to an infant with disabilities who claims the infant was denied life-saving surgery and died.

Another spot shows former network sports announcer Michele Tafoya complaining that the DFL is running ads that say Republicans want to ban abortion. Tafoya, a Republican who backs abortion rights, says the GOP only wants “reasonable abortion laws” and the state Supreme Court would block a ban.

Tafoya’s appearance is notable because her stance on abortion was seen as a liability by Republicans at the 2022 state GOP convention when then-candidate for governor Kendall Qualls had to dismiss floor rumors that she would be his running mate.

“Michele Tafoya is not going to be my lieutenant governor, I want to make sure I dismiss that,” Qualls told delegates. “We’re going to have a lieutenant governor who has our values, that are consistent: A pro-life, 2nd Amendment conservative that wants to return our country back to a constitutional, patriotic way of living.”

Catherine Blaeser is the co-executive director of MCCL and directs the organization’s political committee. While it raises far-less money than Planned Parenthood, it will be devoting its cash to digital ads against DFL incumbents in battleground legislative districts, Blaeser said.

The MCCL message is that the 2023 DFL abortion bills were extreme.

“When we look at the last two years of DFL complete control of the Legislature and the government, we see extreme policies that threaten our most vulnerable citizens,” she said. She defined vulnerable citizens as “not only the unborn, but young women who are victims of sex trafficking and are not being protected with parental notification laws anymore, are not being protected from coerced abortions, women who are not being protected from the dangers of chemical abortions, women who are not being protected by being given reasonable, scientific and medical information and the risks of abortion.”

“We just see extreme policies when we have such lopsided, one sided, extreme legislators,” Blaeser said. “MCCL is working with the constituents of our state who want balanced government and reasonable policies that protect our most vulnerable citizens.”

“When people learn what the law is, they can’t believe it,” Blaeser said.

Late-term abortion

Opponents say, both in Minnesota and nationally, that without statutory gestational limits on abortion, they can occur at any time in the nine-month gestation period. Minnesota repealed its so-called viability threshold last year. But because of federal court rulings in the past, that limit wasn’t enforceable anyway. Viability describes the ability for a fetus to survive outside the womb, which generally occurs around 24 weeks, but some states have lowered that limit to as low as six weeks.

In the vice presidential debate, GOP nominee JD Vance highlighted the GOP attacks after a debate moderator asked Walz this: “Former President Trump said in the last debate that you believe abortion, quote, in the 9th month is absolutely fine. Yes or no? Is that what you support?”

After Walz said that isn’t what the state law says and described cases in restrictive states where woman died trying to get medically necessary abortions, Vance interjected: “… but as I read the Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion, where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late term abortion.”

Responded Walz: “These are women’s decisions to make about their health care decisions and the physicians who know best when they need to do this, trying to distort the way a law is written, to try and make a point. That’s not it at all.

Vance: What was I wrong about? Governor, please tell me. What was I wrong about?

Walz: That is not the way the law is written.

Walz never described the changes to state abortion law or the born-alive sections of state law but the latter changes are best displayed by showing the old-language stricken out and the new verbiage inserted by the Legislature.

Bill sponsors say the new language requires life-saving care if it is consistent with “good medical practice” but that such measures are not legally required for fetuses that are not viable or have fetal abnormalities that do not support life. As a human person with immediate protection under the law, medical personnel would be obligated to take life-saving actions, law supporters say.

Politifact determined that Vance’s description of the Minnesota law was false.

Third trimester abortions are rare in Minnesota and are done only for medical reasons, according to legally required reports from abortion providers.

In 2022, there were 12,175 abortions in the state, with five happening past 23 weeks of gestation and one of those at 32 weeks. According to the required reporting on born alive incidents, there were zero in 2022 and a total of 24 since 2015.

In 2021, for example, the providers gave these reports for the five instances that triggered born alive provisions”

• “In one instance, fetal anomalies were reported resulting in death shortly after delivery. No measures taken to preserve life were reported and the infant did not survive.
•  “In two instances, comfort care measures were provided as planned and the infant did not survive.
• “In two instances, the infant was previable. No measures taken to preserve life were reported and the infant did not survive.”

Blaeser has claimed that only so-called “comfort care” is required by law. Drafters disagree. But the detailed reporting on born alive incidents used by both sides will no longer be required by state law per the 2023 law changes.

DFL lawmakers had considered ending the reporting requirements completely and ultimately limited the questions that must be answered by providers. The law also changed when reports are issued. Before, the report was posted by the Department of Health in June, but is now not reported until December. That means that statistics that might show changes in abortion numbers and gestation months that might result from the new law — as well as whether restrictions in other states increased the number of women traveling to Minnesota for abortions — won’t be known until after the election.

Martin, the DFL chair, said he doesn’t think Democrats should engage in the GOP talking points on late-term abortions, saying they are meant to distract from the fact that, if given political power, Republicans would restrict access to abortion.

“They want to muddy the waters to make it appear they have a more-nuanced position on this when we know many of our Republican candidates favor extreme abortion bans,” he said. “I get why they want to do it. They realize that most Minnesotans are not in the same place where Republicans are on abortion rights.”

In the September MinnPost/Embold Research poll, respondents were asked to choose four issues as the most-important this election, 41% said the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That was second only to the increasing cost of goods, with the highest percentage picking abortion coming from women and voters aged 18 to 34. And it was Democrats, not Republicans, who prioritized abortion as an issue in the poll. A similar poll in 2022 found 43% of Minnesotans listing the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a top priority, again second to the rising costs of goods. 

Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, said abortion is an important issue this year but less so than in 2022 when the election was just months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.

“The state did make an adjustment for that decision. We had a lot of legislation involving women’s health,” Johnson said. “Right now, moreso the questions are hitting people’s pocketbooks — family economics and public safety.”

Peter Callaghan

Peter Callaghan covers state government for MinnPost. Follow him on Twitter @CallaghanPeter or email him at pcallaghan@minnpost.com.

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