At a news conference celebrating passage of the PRO Act, Gov. Tim Walz said the Minnesota Legislature had its “first pro-choice majority in state history.”
At a news conference celebrating passage of the PRO Act, Gov. Tim Walz said the Minnesota Legislature had its “first pro-choice majority in state history.” Credit: MinnPost photo by Tom Olmscheid

Minnesota’s new law establishing a fundamental right to an abortion — signed by Gov. Tim Walz at the Capitol on Tuesday — would not have passed the DFL-controlled House just one year ago. 

That’s because Democrats’ narrow 70-64 majority included a handful of DFLers from more rural areas of the state who did not share the party’s view on abortion access. Meanwhile, Republicans controlled the Senate.

The makeup of both the House and Senate changed after the November election, however. Democrats gained significant ground in the Twin Cities suburbs, allowing the DFL to not only flip the Senate but win another 70-64 majority in the House made up, this time, of lawmakers who favor abortion rights.

At a news conference celebrating passage of the Protect Reproductive Options Act, or PRO Act, Walz said the Legislature had its “first pro-choice majority in state history,” marking a new era where Democratic coalitions are more ideologically aligned on the issue of abortion — and happen to include far fewer rural legislators.

Democrats used to win more in rural areas but have lost many districts since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. Headed into the 2022 election, House DFLers were again faced with losing ground, defending several critical seats in Greater Minnesota that could have decided control of the chamber.

Four DFL representatives had supported bills to limit or regulate abortion access in the past: Gene Pelowski of Winona, Mary Murphy of Hermantown, Julie Sandstede of Hibbing and Paul Marquart of Dilworth.

Murphy and Sandstede ended up losing to Republicans in November, and Democrats also failed to win Marquart’s old seat (he did not run for reelection and is now Walz’s commissioner of the Department of Revenue). Only Pelowski hung on.

But those losses in Greater Minnesota didn’t cost the DFL its House majority. The party won enough suburban districts to offset their losses, and gained a House majority that would eventually vote to codify abortion rights established by a 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling known as Doe v. Gomez. The DFL won its Senate majority by winning swing districts in Greater Minnesota and the metro suburbs.

On Tuesday, Hortman told reporters that lawmakers “couldn’t take this step enshrining this freedom in Minnesota statute without having the new majority we have in the House and the majority we have in the Senate.”

She said the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade played a significant role in winning districts where more voters support abortion rights. “I think that voters saw that this wasn’t just a talking point, Republicans were actually serious about taking away this right that Americans had enjoyed for 50 years,” Hortman said.

There were also DFLers that represent rural areas who voted for the PRO Act, including Rep. Dave Lislegard of Aurora, Sen. Rob Kupec of Moorhead and Sen. Grant Hauschild of Hermantown. (Moorhead and Hermantown may not be rural but those large Senate districts include swaths of voters in rural areas.) All three legislators won in hotly contested swing districts.

Democrats from regional centers across Greater Minnesota like Sen. Jen McEwen of Duluth were also instrumental in passing the bill. McEwen was the prime sponsor of the measure in the Senate.

Republicans unanimously opposed the PRO Act, saying it was the most extreme version of a bill cementing abortion rights and arguing Democrats should support at least some limits on the procedure. But since Pelowski was the only DFLer in the House or Senate to vote against the PRO Act, the measure passed the Legislature.

By contrast, in 2011, the Republican-led Legislature passed a bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks of gestation that was vetoed by then-Gov. Mark Dayton. The measure received five DFL votes in the state Senate and 13 DFL votes in the House, most coming from Greater Minnesota legislators.

On Tuesday, the White House praised Minnesota’s new abortion law in a statement issued by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “Americans overwhelmingly support a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions,” she said. President Biden’s own views on abortion have evolved over the years.

Pelowski said abortion is one issue that has caused the DFL to lose seats in Greater Minnesota, though not the only reason. And the Winona Democrat said he hasn’t been ostracized by Democrats at the Capitol for his views. Pelowski said opposition to abortion is a personal value that transcends his party preference.

Asked about what he thought of the PRO Act, Pelowski said “the only way to answer that will be the next election.”

“If (voters) are for it, there won’t be any backlash,” Pelowski said. “If they’re against it we’ll certainly know, district by district.”

MinnPost Washington D.C. reporter Ana Radelat contributed to this report.

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17 Comments

  1. Oh, there’s no doubt that come election time the MN Repub party will go into hysterics about codifying reproductive rights, because stoking the Culture War is all they have left to offer. That and ubiquitous tax cuts.

    The mystery is why so many rural Americans continue to fall for the empty spiel and buy the defective product…

    1. The same mystery that moves them to still wear ‘Trump’ caps when they go to the casino and Legion Club out here in rural red Amerika.

  2. I’m with BK Anderson, but wonder why DFL’ers and their allies don’t make any effort to re-frame the debate. I can’t say I’m personally an abortion enthusiast, and I doubt that few people really are genuinely enthusiastic about an abortion. What I DO support is genuine choice on the part of women. I’d personally like to see the question phrased differently, as in “Are you in favor of forcing a woman to bear a child?” It’s just one old man’s opinion, of course, but what the handmaidens in the Republican Party and their “pro-life” allies really want is something close to Margaret Atwood’s fictional Gilead.

    From what I’ve observed, most in the “pro-life” movement are not, after all, “pro-life” so much as they are “pro-control” and/or anti-female. Rhetoric about “protecting women’s health” by banning abortion is, at best, sophistry. What’s really being protected is religious belief and the desire of males and some unrelated females to require a female to bear a child, regardless of her age or circumstance. In essence, it’s a view that’s hostile to women, and especially hostile to women exercising agency over their own sexuality and their own bodies.

    The same people are not marching to oppose military appropriations, or hunting, or capital punishment, and in the meantime, those same people too often simultaneously oppose not only abortion,but legislation that would make it easier for women to actually care for and feed a child after it was born, or would make multiple birth control methods widely (and inexpensively – or even freely) available to women of every child-bearing age.

    1. Very well said, although I would’ve added that “pro-life” members of the “conservative” cause also aren’t marching to prevent the thousands upon thousands of deaths from American gun mayhem, either…or vote for reps who want to try to prevent it!

  3. I don’t know how the abortion issue will play out in the next election. The effect of the bill is to take government out of the process. No one will be prosecuted, no time will be served by anyone involved. Anyone who doesn’t like abortion always has the option not to have one. Will this be like gay marriage? Such a disputed issue for so many years, but once the law passed, the issue seemed to entirely disappear.

  4. Could it be that fair minded Minnesotans were appalled that Republicans wanted to deny an abortion to a 10 year old rape victim, forcing her to leave her home state to have it performed – and then attacked the female doctor who did an act of mercy.

    So Republicans, what do you do in a case like that? In some Republican states, rapists get parental rights or if there is a child marriage, criminal charges are dropped.

    If the baby is born to a single mom with a deadbeat dad, do you ask your representatives to appropriate enough funds to alleviate suffering? No, not your problem – tax cuts are more important.

    Republicans call Democrats extreme? Total prohibition is their goal, although if their daughter or mistress is involved, they manage to carve out an exception.

  5. It says politicians should keep their noses and religion out of women’s health care, its between her and her doctor(s).

  6. What ever happened to the term “codifying Roe”?

    Why was the difference between “codifying Roe” and “my body, my choice” never asked of a democrat?

    What ever happened to “conservative Democrats?”

    1. I think what we are learning is that Roe v. Wade was a middle ground in the abortion debate. What happened to it is that it was overturned by the Supreme Court. What happened to the china was that it was broken and there is no gluing it back together.

      I liked the status quo ante, not least because it involved fewer lawyers. Doctors could serve patients without fear of a lot of litigation. Fewer political firm needed to be hired. Fewer activists spoke to us through bullhorns. T hose days were truly halcyon, but they are now part of the past. The fires in our politics are hot and raging, and it is no surprise that we have a court majority anxious to pour more fuel on them. What we are seeing now is the unsurprising result.

  7. Well Minnesota is now 3rd in extreme abortion rights, just behind China and North Korea. Minnesota has stripped parental rights away for a 13 year old to get an abortion without her parents consent. You can now have an abortion right up to birth. You are correct about one thing, voters will have a say!

    1. So Joe, if the birth is going to kill the mother or perhaps both, in Joe land the fetus rules correct?

    2. Just to remind everyone: any abortion taking place hours, days or weeks before (i.e. up-to) “birth” is a medical crises or emergency that no politician or would-be moralist has a right to intrude upon. The ongoing and persistent demand to intrude into these horrific crisis at the worst possible time for women and/or their partners drove this policy in the first place.

      The notion of some woman carrying a pregnancy for 8+ months only to decide a day or two before birth that they just don’t want the baby is little more than a sick and perverse anti-abortion fantasy. We have a law now based on the reality of pregnancy and birth rather than the sick fantasies of anti-abortion moral imbeciles who think they have a right to step into someone else’s medical crises and make decisions.

      Likewise parents no longer have a “right” to impose their will upon their pregnant girls. Again, the imaginary scenario that girls with perfectly healthy and supportive parents will seek secret abortions is another sick fantasy. In reality teenage girls in this scenario are in crises with dysfunctional or even harmful and dangerous parents who cannot be trusted to act in their child’s best interest.

      By the way Joe… we already voted on this, and this law is the result.

      1. I forgot to add, these sick stereotypes of women seeking secret abortions and capriciously deciding to abort pregnancies at the moment of birth aren’t just anti-abortion stereotypes, they’re anti-women stereotypes.

    3. Umm Joe, if the “parents” of the 13 year old were incompetent enough to allow their 13 YEAR OLD! to wind up pregnant, why in the hell should they have ANY say in the matter?

  8. The majority of Minnesotan’s and Americans have always supported abortion rights and women’s right to choose. The DFL has historically been out of step with the majority on a variety of issues. This was the outcome of the “New Democrat” or neoliberal capture of the Democratic Party in the late 70’s and 80’s. Lukewarm advocacy for women’s rights, labor rights, and civil rights in general not to mention liberal politics and economics were the hallmark of the new conservative Democratic Party and the DFL.

    Obviously the conservative grip on the DFL appears to be slipping. After decades of defeat and gridlock perhaps DFLers have finally realized that a liberal Party is the only antidote to Fascism and conservative extremism?

    Were abortion is concerned the conservative Democratic tendency to accommodate anti-abortion demands finally culminated in the recent Roe debacle at the Supreme Court. Democrats hid behind Roe as if it were an impregnable wall they could rely on while offering minimal support for abortion rights for decades. The folly of that strategy was finally revealed along with the power of the liberal voting block. So now maybe the DFL will discover the power of delivering results rather than defeat?

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