ST. PAUL, Minnesota, April 26, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – The social conservative tide that flooded America in November did not rise high enough in Minnesota to secure passage of pro-life bills to defund abortion and to regulate abortuaries.
Gov. Mark Dayton has vetoed pro-life bills in the past and has vowed to do so again if both measures, as expected, are passed in the state’s House of Representatives and Senate, said Bill Poehler, communications director of the Minnesota Concerned Citizens for Life.
In fact, both bills have already been passed in the House by wide margins (77-54 and 79-53).
“We are pretty hopeful and confident they will pass in the Senate as well,” Poehler told LifeSiteNews, but likely by a much narrower margin.
Republicans have held a majority of seats in both the House and Senate only “one other time in the last 50 or 60 years,” Poehler noted, but both bills lack the two-thirds majority in both chambers to overcome the governor’s veto.
The second measure has undergone significant amendment in order to ensure passage through both chambers and the governor’s approval. However, Dayton’s assistant chief of staff, Matt Swenson, has left little room for accommodation.
“The governor opposes any new law restricting a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions,” Swenson said.
Originally, the second bill called for abortion clinics to meet the same standards as other facilities where surgical procedures are conducted — for example, by making doorways wide enough for stretchers to be wheeled through.
But opponents say the state’s five abortion clinics are being targeted for regulations that will not be faced by some 1,250 “similar” clinics that perform colonoscopies, knee arthroscopies, and liposuction, with the possibility of equal or more serious complication rates.
Pro-life legislators bargained down the proposed standard to those maintained by Planned Parenthood itself — but still with the state as enforcer.
“Our goal has always been to protect women, not to shut down clinics, but the other side of the aisle didn’t believe us,” said Rep. Deb Kiel, R-Crookston, as reported by the Pioneer Press.
Despite the reduced regulation, pro-abortion legislators have persisted in their opposition.
“We don’t tell women that if they want other kinds of health care, they should go seek charity to be able to have that,” said Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, also quoted by the Pioneer Press.
Jen Aulwes, communications director for Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, agreed.
“It’s about singling out abortion providers in an attempt to make abortion less accessible in the state and make it harder for abortion providers to provide this legal service,” she told reporters.
This makes Poehler think Gov. Dayton will veto both bills despite the changes.
Poehler said the current effort to see the two bills through the legislature was still worth making in order to publicize the issues.
The 1995 Doe v. Gomez decision of the Minnesota Supreme Court enabled Medicaid to pay for abortions for women with low incomes. In 2014, the state paid $953,187 for 3,957 abortions, or 43 percent of all abortions.
“We’re going to keep fighting. Most Minnesotans don’t realize that they are paying for so many abortions, nor that the abortion clinics are not regulated by the state,” he said.
While he knows of no recent polling, he believes pro-life support has risen since a 2002 poll that indicated only 5 percent of adult Minnesotans supported the status quo, which is abortion on demand. Fully 52 percent thought abortion should be illegal.
Nor does he think Minnesotans differ from the majority of Americans who oppose taxpayer-funded abortions.
“We see this as a pro-life state,” Poehler said.
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