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A depiction of an unborn baby at about 10 weeks gestation

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (LifeSiteNews) — The Minnesota Senate on Saturday passed a bill that will allow abortion for any reason up until birth, putting the state on par with “China and North Korea,” as one pro-life leader pointed out. 

Now expected to be signed into law by Democratic Governor Tim Walz, who has a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood, the so-called Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act asserts a woman’s “fundamental right” to “obtain an abortion.”

The bill further forbids Minnesota localities from enacting protections for the unborn that would impose any “more restrictive” limits on abortion, meaning anything that would ban even partial-birth abortion, as lawmakers earlier decided.

Earlier this month, Republicans proposed amendments to the PRO Act that would have limit late-term and partial-birth abortions, but they were rejected by the Democrat-controlled Minnesota House Health Finance and Policy Committee.

Senators approved the bill by just a one-vote margin, 34-33, according to LifeNews, while it passed the Minnesota House 69-65, a nearly party-line vote.

Tim Miller, executive director of Pro-Life Action Ministries Action, has warned that once the bill becomes law, it means “An unborn child can be murdered up to one second before they leave their mother’s birth canal.”

“There will be no requirement for an abortion to take place in a clinic setting and a doctor is no longer needed,” said Miller, who also pointed out it will mean “a school counselor can take a student to an abortion clinic without their parents’ knowledge.”

The bill’s disregard for parental consent to abortion has led Cathy Blaeser, co-executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, to decry what she says is the bill’s facilitation of sex trafficking.

The lack of parental involvement allows the most heinous of criminals—human and sex traffickers—to hide behind the doors of the unlicensed, uninspected abortion facility,” said Blaeser, reported LifeNews. “These traffickers are happily watching this legislature advance extreme, unfettered abortion bills that enable them to continue to traffic their victims.”

“The absolutist extremism of this bill would put Minnesota in the company of just a handful of countries worldwide, among them China and North Korea,” Blaeser has also pointed out in a statement. “Mothers and babies deserve a far more humane and compassionate approach.”

Minnesota Representative Jen McEwen, DFL-Duluth, says the bill was provoked by last year’s Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision.

“What we saw was a need after Roe v. Wade was struck down this past summer, to codify the rights we currently have in Minnesota into the statutory law to provide that extra layer of protection,” said McEwen, according to CBS News.

The bill’s lead sponsor, Democrat state Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, has defended the radical legislation with the declaration, “I know that not every positive pregnancy test is a celebration and not every ultrasound appointment ends with good news. I, as a politician, have no business making that decision for someone else.”

Minnesota Republican lawmakers, however, vehemently disagree.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson had denounced the PRO Act as “the most extreme bill in the country regarding youth sterilization, late-term abortions, and public liability for a vast array of reproductive services.”

LifeNews had noted that other anti-life legislation has been introduced in Minnesota, including H.F. 91/S.F. 70, which would “repeal a law protecting newborns who survive abortion.”

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