Minnesota abortion law signed by Walz scrutinized during VP debate

Abortion access and reproductive rights remain a key issue for voters this election and featured prominently in the showdown between vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance.

Internet searches about Minnesota’s abortion law — the first state to codify access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — were high during Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate and into Wednesday morning, according to Google Trends.

While generally cordial, Vance and Walz sparred over the law’s language, with Vance leaning into Republican rhetoric of Democrats being OK with abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy or preventing doctors from preserving the life of an infant.

“The statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion,” Vance said. “That is, I think, whether you’re pro-choice or pro-abortion, that is fundamentally barbaric.”

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Walz interjected saying the claims weren’t true.

“These are women’s decisions to make about their health care decisions, and the physicians who know best when they need to do this,” Walz said. “Trying to distort the way a law is written to try and make a point — that’s not it at all. There’s a continuation of these guys to try and tell women or to get involved. I use this line on this. Just mind your own business on this. Things work best when Roe v. Wade was in place.”

However, Walz did not get into the nuance of the law and how it was something many Minnesota physicians advocated for. So, reproductive health reporter Shefali Luthra with The 19th joined Morning Editon host Cathy Wurzer Wednesday to dig into the details.

Listen to their full conversation by clicking on the player button.

Minnesota law doesn’t have a viability limit on when a pregnant person could get an abortion

While a viability limit, or cutoff in fetal gestation, hadn’t been enforced in Minnesota since 1976, state lawmakers removed the language entirely last year. A similar lack of limitation exists in a few parts of the country, including Washington, D.C. and Colorado, Luthra said.

“The idea there is pretty similar to what the governor said, which is this notion that people and their doctors are usually the ones who decide whether and when they need an abortion. And I want to be really clear that when we talk about the abortions that take place after viability. They are, first of all, very, very, very rare,” she said.

As reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the vast majority of abortions happen within the first trimester, meaning at or before 13 weeks of pregnancy.

“In those cases, it’s usually because of some kind of complication in the health of the pregnancy — something that maybe means the fetus isn’t viable, something that threatens the pregnant person’s health,” Luthra said. “These are often very tough, frankly, very heart-wrenching stories. I’ve spoken to many patients about their experiences getting abortions at this point in pregnancy, and it’s largely wanted pregnancies where they have no other option, and frankly, very few places to go to access health care.”

The most recent Minnesota data show just seven induced abortions in the third trimester in a five-year period.

Vance: Minnesota no longer requires doctors to perform life-saving care on babies with often fatal fetal anomalies

Among the several revisions to state abortion law last year, Minnesota lawmakers amended a statute that mandated doctors to take all reasonable measures to “preserve the life and health” of born-alive infants. The law now reads physicians should “care for” the infant, dropping the word “preserve.” Walz didn’t attempt to explain why, but this change leaves room for palliative care for infants not expected to live.

“This is something that we have seen come up because a lot of Republicans and abortion opponents,” Luthra said. “They do understand that largely the public opposes abortion restrictions, and so what they’ve done is try and cast Democrats as very extreme on the issue by focusing on areas where they suspect this may be less popular, such as abortions later in pregnancy — where the polling is a bit squishier and people don't fully understand the context in which this occurs, but also trying to argue without evidence, and frankly, falsely, that babies are being killed, and this is part of that.”

This is illegal.

“What we have put in the bill is what I would call comfort language,” co-author Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, testified on the House floor in April of 2023. “Removing the so-called ‘Born Alive Infant Act’ from the law does not legalize infanticide as has been alleged.

“If you give birth pre-term or to an infant that has some kind of devastating defect, instead of that infant being ripped out of your arms because politicians have decided that that is what should happen and there should be significant interventions… it should be between the parents and the doctor,” Liebling said. “People in these tragic situations deserve that privacy.”

Allowing some flexibility in the laws gives doctors and parents such options, Luthra said.

“If you know that your child isn’t going to live, maybe you deserve a chance to hold it, to spend some time bonding, to do palliative care rather than focus on medical interventions that aren’t going to work,” Luthra said.

Vance: Republicans need to win back public trust around abortion issue

It’s not the first time Vance has said this, Luthra said. In his home state of Ohio, he posited the same argument after Ohioans approved a ballot measure enshrining the right to an abortion under state law.

“And if you look at the polling again, he’s right. We have seen poll after poll after poll that shows that voters, especially those who care about abortion, largely do not trust Republicans on this issue,” Luthra continued. “JD Vance is trying to counter that, but it’s a very tough battle to regain trust on an issue where for, frankly, a very, very long time you have been allied with an entity and an interest group that opposes abortion.”

Vance also has been inconsistent in supporting a national abortion ban, as has Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump.

What’s in store these final weeks before Election Day?

“I would be very surprised if we don’t see a lot of abortion [[discussion]] coming up,” Luthra said. Walz’s referencing by name of women whose lives were changed or ended due to abortion restrictions was “very powerful and very resonant,” she added.

She expects to see more real-life examples from the Harris campaign and remains curious about what the Republicans’ strategy will be as they appear to rebrand their stance on reproductive rights.

Tuesday night, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban,” saying he’d veto it should such a ban hit his desk. “It is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters.”