The Positive Pregnancies Support Act was introduced to the Senate on Jan. 17 to expand access to safer reproductive health services and information as well as reform services crisis pregnancy centers provide.
If passed, the bill, authored by Sen. Mary Kunesh (DFL-New Brighton) and Rep. Liz Olson (DFL-Duluth), would reform the Positive Alternatives to Abortion Act, a Minnesota law that enables state funding for crisis pregnancy centers. Critics of these centers say they often pose as places that offer reproductive health care but aim to prevent pregnant people from getting abortions.
The Positive Pregnancies Support Act is meant to improve reproductive health care for pregnant people, according to an email statement to the Minnesota Daily from UnRestrict Minnesota, an organization dedicated to expanding abortion access in Minnesota and advocating for the act.
The bill would require state-funded reproductive health care providers to offer medically accurate information to patients and remove any language representing anti-abortion propaganda. It would also lift a gag rule preventing state funding from going to organizations with connections to abortion providers and eliminate language requiring providers to try to persuade pregnant people who come to them to carry their pregnancies to term.
Abena Abraham, campaign director for UnRestrict Minnesota, said the bill will not end state funding of crisis pregnancy centers but will instead add more regulations to them.
“Some of the crisis pregnancy centers offer ultrasounds, and the people performing those ultrasounds are not always ultrasound techs or people that are licensed to perform ultrasounds,” Abraham said. “What the bill would do is ensure that the folks working within these facilities actually have licenses to perform the services that they say that they do and that folks are given all pregnancy options.”
The Act would fund more services and resources for those in need of reproductive care as well as provide more information about pregnancy care programs to the public.
“It’s disappointing to see that our state is investing a lot of money in organizations that deceive people and remind them of finding out that they’re pregnant,” Abraham said. “The fact that you may be [pregnant] triggers a lot of emotions for folks and people are oftentimes googling quickly to find resources to help them figure out what they need…It’s maddening that they have been unchecked for many years and are causing a lot of harm to people in our community.”
Alongside the introduction of this bill, the PRO (Protect Reproductive Options) Act was also introduced and passed by the state Legislature; Gov. Tim Walz signed the act into law on Jan. 31. The PRO Act ensures several rights for Minnesotans, including the right to carry on a pregnancy, a right to contraceptives, a right to carry out an abortion and the right to reproductive health care privacy.
Mira Altobell-Resendez, a member of the University of Minnesota student organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), said the group is fighting for abortion access at the University.
“Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it was sort of like a wake-up call about how Minnesotans have our status as a sanctuary state to those states surrounding us that have triggered bans on abortion,” Altobell-Resendez said. “We have a responsibility to the people both coming into the state seeking abortions and also to Minnesotans themselves to be able to provide adequate health care to everyone.”
Zareya Nolen, a first-year student at the University, said having access to reproductive care on campus is important. Currently, the University has no clinics on campus that offer abortion-related services.
“I think having reproductive care on campus is helping so many people in many different ways,” Nolen said. “Everyone at college has a goal in life, and that’s to finish college.”
