Minnesota’s updated abortion laws are caring, not cold

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Recent reforms to Minnesota abortion laws are under the microscope now that Vice President Kamala Harris has tapped Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Several commentary authors have weighed in on the changes. Their reviews are brutal.

“The mind recoils with horror at the suffering of a newborn baby allowed to slowly die as it is denied hydration, nutrition, and medical care,“ wrote Donald W. Bohlken in a Des Moines Register guest commentary that took aim at Walz and state lawmakers. “Animals instinctively care for their babies. Unless we choose to descend to depravity, we cannot and should not vote for Kamala Harris … and Tim Walz.”

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker also blasted Walz in late August for the same reason, scoffing at Walz’s commitment to ”the ethics of ’women’s reproductive health‘” because he signed the Minnesota changes into law. Parker also wrote that the governor’s ”deceptive“ comments on this and other issues ”is the stuff of nightmares and leads to the gulag.”

The impression created by these two accounts is a chilling one: that the state is now one where healthy, full-grown infants are carelessly left to suffer by heartless health care providers, parents and political leaders. That’s a serious accusation, one that demands a deeper look at what Minnesota’s DFL legislative majority actually did in 2023 and why lawmakers decided to act.

Additional perspective and information suggests that the issue is far more complicated than Bohlken or Parker contend. There’s also a strong argument to be made that the Minnesota changes are rooted in compassion for parents who face a devastating diagnosis late in a pregnancy — fetal defects incompatible with life or a medical condition that jeopardizes the mother’s life.

Under the revised Minnesota law, decisions in this rare but heartbreaking situation are now entrusted to families and their doctors instead of having the state mandate the standard of care.

”We believe that women and their doctors can be trusted to make the best health decisions in this situation and politicians should stay out of it,” said Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, in an interview. She chairs the Legislature’s powerful Health Finance and Policy committee and pushed for the changes.

It should come as no surprise that lawmakers focused on reproductive health in 2023. That was the first session after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, shifting abortion policy to the states. While many states moved to restrict abortion access, Minnesota did the opposite.

Lawmakers passed the PRO Act early in the session, which codified abortion access. They also evaluated other statutory language on abortion. Updates, such as reducing some of the information gathered from women having abortions, were included in legislation passed at the session’s end and signed by Walz.

The change at the heart of Bohlken’s and Parker’s accusations involves Minnesota Statutes section 145.423, subdivision 1. Before the 2023 session, it stated that an infant “born alive as a result of an abortion” shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law. In addition, it required medical personnel to take all reasonable measures to “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.”

The updated law still says that any infant born alive shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law. The key difference is the care requirement. The language about preserving the infant’s life and health is gone. The law now requires “all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice … shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to care for the infant who is born alive.”

What that means, as Liebling noted, is that families and physicians decide together how best to proceed when a termination past the point of viability is tragically required. Thankfully, this is rare, with just 1% of all U.S. abortions happening at or after 21 weeks.

In an interview, Dr. Erin Stevens, a Minnesota OB-GYN, offered real-world perspective from her practice on how the state’s change helps families.

Instead of being required by the state to have an infant with severe anomalies undergo extraordinary and futile medical care, parents in Minnesota can now hold their dying infant to say goodbye if that is what they have chosen, Stevens said.

Often, the moment at which a parent can bid farewell while the infant is still alive is fleeting. “One minute may be all you get,“ said Stevens, who is the legislative chair for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Minnesota chapter.

The moment, however brief, can bring a meaningful measure of comfort, one that doesn’t happen if the state-dictated standard of care requires an infant to be stripped away from its mother to be put on a breathing machine or undergo other care that at best will simply delay death.

It’s important to note that the 2023 law does not prevent a parent or a doctor from pursuing all medical options. Nor does it remove or reduce the ethical and legal obligations of doctors and hospitals toward any child.

The Minnesota Medical Association, the state’s medical society, supported the 2023 efforts to repeal so-called “born alive” laws on the books that impeded care. The organization’s support for the changes, as well as backing from physicians like Stevens, bolster the argument that the Minnesota changes are conscientious, not coldblooded as Bohlken and Parker believe.

“These patients who have gone through this trauma and these terrible outcomes are now reading media pieces seeing themselves … and their providers who gave them compassionate care portrayed as people doing terrible, terrible things,” Stevens said. “That has to be so traumatic to have their lived experiences questioned and put into this negative category.”