After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, Minnesota repealed and re-wrote even its most basic common-sense abortion guidelines, making it one of the most loosely regulated states in the union.
Minnesota is so lax on abortion, in fact, that some journalists assumed Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance must have been lying last week when he said abortion specialists in the state are not required to render life-saving aid to children who survive botched abortions.
But Vance is right.
Under the leadership of Kamala Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D), Minnesota’s laws regarding the care of born-alive infants have been repealed or re-written with vague language that no longer explicitly includes such a requirement. Member of the press simply haven’t bothered to check their facts.
“[T]he statute that [Walz] signed into law,” Vance said during the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate, “it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion, where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion.”
The Republican candidate added, “That’s fundamentally barbaric.”
Walz objected, accusing Vance of “trying to distort the way a law is written, to try and make a point.”
Prompted by Vance to explain what, exactly, he had gotten incorrect about Minnesota’s abortion laws, Walz asserted again, “That is not the way the law is written. … [T]hat’s been misread. And it was fact-checked at the last debate. It’s not the case. It’s not true. That’s not what the law says.”
After the debate, as members of the media sought new ways to cope with Walz’s uninspiring performance, a table of CNN panelists erupted into shouting and crosstalk when one commentator noted, correctly, that Vance was not wrong about Minnesota’s abortion laws. The upset panelists asserted that it’s both “disrespectful” to imply that anyone would want for an infant to die (do they know what abortion is?) and that it’s also “none of [anyone’s] business what women do.”
But here are the relevant facts. In 1976, the Minnesota state legislature approved a measure (Section 145.423) to protect children who survive abortions. The statute declared that “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law,” and that “All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken to preserve the life and health of the child.”
Later, in 2015, the Minnesota legislature passed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which, among other things, defined “born-alive infants” as “every infant member of the species Homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.”
The act also made minor language tweaks to all three subdivisions of the original 1976 statute while adding six new subdivisions to cover “civil penalties for medical personnel who did not provide adequate care, privacy protections for court proceedings related to born-alive infants, and the status of born alive-infants who survive following an abortion procedure,” reports the Dispatch’s Alex Demas.
Fast-forward a couple of years.
Between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2022, the Minnesota Department of Health recorded and reported eight cases in which infants were born alive during abortion procedures. None of the children survived.
Moreover, of five born-alive cases reported between January 1 and December 31, 2021, the Minnesota Department of Health said “no measures taken to preserve life were reported” for three of them. Then came the fall of Roe vs. Wade.
In 2023, Walz signed legislation repealing all six subdivisions added to the state’s 1976 statute by the 2015 Born Alive Infants Protection Act. The post-Roe legislation also removed two of the three original subdivisions included in the 1976 measure, leaving only a single subdivision with heavily revised language.
The portion of the law that still remains originally read as follows (emphasis my own): “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law. All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken to preserve the life and health of the child.”
After Walz’s revisions, this remaining provision now reads a bit differently: “An infant who is born alive shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law. All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to care for the infant who is born alive.”
You will notice that the requirement of treatment to “preserve the life and health of the child” is now missing. This is not by accident. The edit was deliberate and done with consideration. Anyone suggesting the change in language doesn’t allow for what it clearly allows is not being honest with you.
While we’re at it, it is risible that abortion advocates want us to believe on the one hand that Georgia’s extremely clear fetal heartbeat law is too vague for risk-averse doctors to understand, and on the other hand that changing “to preserve the life and health” to “to care for the infant who is born alive” does not intentionally create an implicit permission structure.
And speaking of permission structures, Walz also enshrined abortion in Minnesota’s laws with a bill that included a statute that reads: “Every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right to…obtain an abortion.” The bill outlines no prohibitions or restrictions whatsoever.
So Minnesota also has no statutory limitations on abortions at any stage of pregnancy.
On Oct. 1, during the vice-presidential debate, Walz flat-out denied the specifics of the legislation he had signed into law. The debate moderators, CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, who had earlier attempted to “fact-check” Vance on illegal and legal immigration, made no effort to challenge or even “contextualize” Walz’s repeated denials.
“Gentlemen, there’s a lot to discuss,” O’Donnell said before segueing into a series of questions about which laws could better protect children from gun violence. “We have to move on.”
As it turns out, the road from “safe, legal, and rare” to “unregulated, legal, and no questions asked through the ninth month” was not a long one.
Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center.
