MINNEAPOLIS — A year after the US Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v Wade decision, Minnesota abortion providers have seen a sizable surge in patients coming from other states.
Planned Parenthood North Central States is reporting a 100 percent surge in patients from outside the region since the High Court's ruling in the Dobbs v Jackson case. There's also been a 19 percent increase in second-trimester abortions, mainly with patients from states where abortion bans and restrictions went into place after Roe fell.
"We are a haven and we're trying to see as many patients as we can, but that means our wait lists are longer for some procedures and our staff are really feeling the urgency to get people in," Dr. Sarah Traxler of Planned Parenthood told reporters in a recent conference call.
Whole Woman's Health in Bloomington has seen an upsurge in patients traveling here for care as well. In the couple of months following Dobbs 30 percent of the clinic's patients were from out of state, which was double the demand from a month before the Dobbs decision.
It peaked in November of 2022 when nearly 42 percent of the Bloomington clinic's patients were from outside of Minnesota. On average out-of-state women have accounted for 20 percent of patients served there, according to founder and CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller.
"Whole Woman's Health operates clinics in what really feels like two different Americas where we had to close our clinics in Texas and Indiana, and where our clinics in Virginia and Maryland and Minnesotan are seeing people from lots of places in the country."
She noted that Dr. Joseph Nelson, who moved from Whole Woman's closed clinic in Texas to the Minnesota site, is still worrying and wondering if he'll face lawsuits from other states.
"Those providers with licenses in multiple states have spent a lot of time this year trying to figure out how to care for people no matter where they're from, and how they can protect themselves from hostile attorneys generals or hostile health departments in some of these places that have banned abortion."
As soon as the opinion was leaked last summer Minnesota's DFL leaders offered assurances to women that abortion would remain legal in this state due to the Minnesota Supreme Court's 1995 decision in the Doe v. Gomez case. Attorney General Keith Ellison said his team would go to bat for patients who came to Minnesota seeking reproductive health care.
Abortion rights became a key issue for Democrats in the 2022 election, which resulted in a DFL trifecta at the State Capitol. For the first time in a decade, Democrats would control both chambers of the legislature, the governor's office, and the attorney general's office.
"These shifting sands, this changing landscape, this patchwork of reproductive freedom we now have across the country it's never happened before in terms of the Supreme Court taking rights away from US citizens," Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, an Eden Prairie Democrat, told KARE.
Rep. Kotyza-Witthuhn led the charge for the Protect Reproduction Options Act in the House, a bill that placed the Doe v Gomez ruling into state law. It was one of several bills the legislature passed that strengthened abortion rights in Minnesota and established added legal protections for those who receive and provide abortions in this state.
"We needed to pass this legislation because the Dobbs ruling showed courts can change. Should the makeup of the Minnesota Supreme Court ever change, Doe v Gomez could go away too just as easily," Kotyza-Witthuhn explained.
The day the ruling came down she was with other state lawmakers attending a conference in Massachusetts. They ended up at a rally in that state with like-minded people.
"The opinion had been leaked but we were just devastated. We had no words. I'm going to think back to that. I will remember that moment and I'm going to encourage people to share out where they were and how they felt a year ago today."
Opponents revel
Minnesota's abortion opponents plan a celebration at the State Capitol Saturday morning, to mark the end of Roe v. Wade. They're holding out hope that Republicans will regain control of the legislature and undo the bills passed this year by the DFL majorities.
"We will gather in the Minnesota State Capitol Rotunda to pray for the state of Minnesota and the removal of the evil that resides here, recommit to the sacred work of saving innocent babies and their families from abortion, and to thank God for the overturning of Roe v. Wade," read a statement from Pro Life Ministries.
On the Minnesota Family Council's Family Beacon Podcast Friday, co-host Moses Bratrud said he was excited to see the first anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson "which demolished Roe v. Wade and affirmed that our US Constitution has no right to abortion in it."
Co-host Grace Evans added, "We didn't just overturn Roe v. Wade, we hit it with a baseball bat!"
On the national level, many Republican presidential candidates are pledging to work for a nationwide abortion ban, or at the very least restrictions to bar abortions after 15 weeks.
"Tomorrow we will mark the first anniversary of the day that a conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States sent Roe Versus Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs!" former Vice President and current candidate Mike Pence told a crowd at the Faith and Freedom Road to the Majority conference in Washington, DC Friday.
"Some have even gone on to blame the overturning of Roe vs. Wade for election losses in 2022. But let me say from my heart, the cause of life is the calling of our time, and we must not rest and must not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in this country."