Minnesota Democrats Eye Abortion Ballot Measure

Minnesota Democrats are entertaining the idea of joining at least a dozen states in putting forward an abortion ballot measure in 2024.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) “says he is open to putting a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights on the November ballot,” CBS News reported on Monday. Abortion is currently legal throughout pregnancy in Minnesota.

“These are people’s lives and health care decisions that need to be made by them and their health care providers,” Walz said.

Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman has also said that Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) legislators are weighing whether to introduce an abortion ballot measure. Hortman told Axios in November the idea is “in the mix when we talk about 2024” but said that they “haven’t heard clearly from voters or from the caucuses here at the State Capitol that [an amendment] is the next thing that we should do.”

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life’s Cathy Blaeser is opposed to the idea, telling CBS News that Minnesotans do not “want to be known as an abortion mecca.”

Consideration of such a measure comes as Planned Parenthood officials in the state report an increase in abortions being driven by those coming from other states since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

“Officials estimate that there has been a 25 percent increase in abortions in Minnesota in that time,” according to the report. “Fueling that is a 100 percent increase in the number of patients traveling from other states where abortion is banned or restricted. Patients are coming here for abortions from as far away as Florida and Texas.”

Activists and lawmakers in at least several other states (including Montana, Arkansas, and New Hampshire) are working to put abortion amendments on the ballot in November after a string of state-level pro-abortion victories following the fall of Roe v. Wade — a 1973 Supreme Court decision which had, for 50 years, invented a “right” to abortion.

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.