For all the trouble they had completing their work this
year, Minnesota legislators didn’t get bogged down in one issue that
certainly has the ability to bog down a session: abortion.
Just
two bills were brought up in the regular session: One would have banned
taxpayer funding (via Medicaid) for abortions; the other would have
required strict licensing of any clinic where more than 10 abortions per
month were performed. Both bills were supported by Republicans in the
House and Senate, but neither got close to getting full legislative
approval.
That relative lack of action around the
always-contentious issue has made Minnesota a conspicuous outlier among
its Midwestern cohorts.
Across the country, since
Republicans won big during the 2010 elections, states have enacted 231
bills restricting abortions, said Sarah Stoesz, president and CEO of
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, South and North Dakota. The result: today,
Minnesota is surrounded by states where abortion rights have been
curtailed in recent years.
In
South Dakota, there is only one clinic that offers abortions: a Planned
Parenthood in Sioux Falls. There’s a 72-hour waiting period between
when a woman says she wants an abortion and when she can undergo the
procedure. (Weekends and holidays are excluded in the wait time.) And no
South Dakota physicians are performing abortions, according to Stoesz,
meaning each time an abortion is to be performed a physician from
Minnesota must go to Sioux Falls.
Yet, anti-abortion
as South Dakota appears, in 2008 the state’s voters rejected an
initiative that would have prohibited all abortions, except for when the
mother’s health was at stake.
North Dakota’s story
is similar to South Dakota’s. In 2013, the state legislature passed the
most restrictive abortion bill in the nation, one that would have
prohibited the procedure at the point the heartbeat of the fetus occurs.
Typically, that’s at between six to eight weeks.
Last
year, however, U.S. District Court Daniel Hovland said the law was
unconstitutional. “A woman’s constitutional right to terminate a
pregnancy before viability has been recognized by the United States
Supreme Court for more than 40 years,’’ Hovland wrote. Viability doesn’t
occur until 27 or 28 weeks into a pregnancy.
Like
South Dakotans, North Dakotans proved they may not be as opposed to
abortion rights as some thought. In 2014 a “personhood” initiative,
which declared “the right to life of every human being at any stage of
development’’ was soundly defeated at the polls. Not only did the
initiative go down, but two long-time pro-life legislators were
defeated.
Iowa has been relatively quiet, though
there has been a strange twist to a law passed in 2013 that requires the
state's governor to approve each publicly funded abortion. The
University of Iowa Medical School decided to “stay out of the politics
of the issue” by absorbing the costs of abortions that would have needed
the approval of Gov. Terry Branstad, a pro-life Republican.
Wisconsin set to pass new restrictions
But
nowhere is the issue more hotly debated right now than in Wisconsin.
Since Gov. Scott Walker was elected and the GOP won legislative
majorities, there have been a series of abortion restrictions passed.
Women seeking abortions are required to undergo ultrasounds. Physicians
are banned from performing abortions in hospitals in which they don’t
have admitting privileges. Planned Parenthood lost state funding,
causing a number of its facilities to close.
And this
week, the Republican majority in the Wisconsin senate is expected to
pass a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks. Though the state’s
Assembly has yet to put the bill on its calendar, Walker has promised to
sign it.
Proponents of the law claim that at 20
weeks a fetus can feel pain, a point Walker touted on a recent interview
on CNN. “Whether you’re pro-life or not, that’s a good time to say that
shouldn’t be legal after a time when a child can literally feel pain,”
he said. But according to Doug Laube, a Madison physician and former
president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,
the oft-mentioned pain theory Walker cited is “junk science.” Studies
have shown that, given fetal brain development, it would not be possible
for pain to be felt until 26 to 27 weeks of development, Laube says.
But
the biggest issue with the bill, Laube says, “is the safety of the
mother.’’ At 20 weeks, doctor and mother are confronted with
gut-wrenching legal decisions. Under the law, the well-being of the
fetus — no matter its viability — appears to be placed ahead of the
well-being of the mother. A physician who would abort a fetus at 21
weeks could face 3½ years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
