With Harris and Walz, Democrats put abortion rights at the top of the agenda

More than a year before he was chosen as the vice president Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, visited the Planned Parenthood clinic in his state with Harris which was a first visit of the president or the vice president to any abortion clinic. 
 
That visit in March brought a lot of attention to Minnesota’s attempts to protect rights to reproductive health. 
 
Now, Harris and Walz are both members of the Democratic party that actively campaigns for women’s rights to abortion and fertility treatment technologies, at a time when those issues are believed to be essential to the voters and are expected to become the main focal point of most Democratic campaigns. 
 
Minnesota became the first state to formally establish a woman’s right over her body after the Supreme Court gave its ruling in the 2022 case of Dobbs. The law that Walz signed in January of 2023 states that a person cannot be discriminated or denied services by an LG, such that it involves cities, counties, towns, and so on regarding a decision to get an abortion or other reproductive services. 
 
About half a year after that Walz enacted another abortion-rights law and that code restricts the arrest of abortion providers in Minnesota and shields individuals who come to Minnesota to evade a state abortion law. The actual statute in Minnesota is clear in stating that officials in Minnesota are not required to release copies of a patient’s health records based on a subpoena or a court order from another state. 
 
In Minnesota, the number of people coming to receive abortions from other states increased by 3folds from 2020 to 2023, as pinned down by the Guttmacher Institute, an upbeat abortion advocacy association. 
 
These actions were cited by advocates for the rights to abortions when supporting Walz on Tuesday. 
 
“Governor Walz now has one of the most pro-choice ticket-mates in the country,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “Walz has been supporting the rights of women to make their decisions about pregnancies for a long time and have been vocal as the Governor in supporting abortion rights. ” 
 
Minnesota, a Democratic part of the country, has fairly liberal laws regarding abortion within the United States. Abortion was legalized there since the Roe decision in 1974. In 1995 The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the women’s right to abortion by affirming from the constitution. 
 
Subsequently, after the Roe decision was nullified, the state has also incorporated other policies to facilitate abortions. Earlier this year in July, a district court judge rejected several limitations which were as follows, physicians only can conduct abortions and contestants could only do abortions if they entertained patients for twenty-four hours. Abortions are also funded by state’s medicaid money. 
 
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz also rolled back funding to a Minnesota Department of Health grant program for so-called crisis pregnancy centers in the state that counsel pregnant people and provide them with baby items but aim to dissuade them from getting abortions. Unfortunately, some of these centers have often been noted to give false information or half-truths. 
 
National Right to Life which is the largest anti-abortion organization in the United States stated on Tuesday that Walz’s action to siphon monies for the defunct of crisis pregnancy centers in his state was a ‘blow’ to families. 
 
“If elected, a Harris-Walz Administration would push for the most extreme abortion agenda policies of any administration,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. 
 
Besides, the incumbent has advocated for the reproduction rights and has supported in vitro fertilization. Numerous advocates of abortion rights fear IVF is also in danger post-Dobbs, because the technology entails discarding embryos for reasons such as genetic disorders or as the couple decides they do not want them any longer. A few of them which support fetal personhood have also disputed that activity. For example, the National Right to Life claims that frozen embryos should be –adopted’ by other couples for their use instead of being discarded. 
 
Walz, who disclosed to the Minneapolis Star Tribune in March that his two children were born through fertility treatment, said his wife had been undergoing fertility treatments for seven years before she got pregnant for their daughter. 
 
In February, Walz slammed an Alabama Supreme Court decision that classified embryos produced via IVF as children; this implied that one could be taken to court for discarding them. The legal gap made several IVF providers in the state of Alabama stop their operations temporarily but they began their services again after the legal backup for the fertility doctors and the clinics were created in the state. 
 
“This issue personally affects our family and so many others,” the statement came from Walz’s Facebook page at that time. “Do not let these guys pull this on you by telling you that they are for IVF but their carefully selected judges are actually against it Put it this way, the proof of the pudding lies in the eating and in their case the writing is on the wall. ” 
 
Ghassemi Walz has also shown a preference for a bill that was introduced in the previous year by the Minnesota House of Representatives which calls for all the Minnesota health plans that offer maternity coverage to also meet the cost of fertility treatment. The man has also insisted on the Minnesota abortion-rights law enacted in January 2023 to be amended with words that would help enhance the access to IVF and all other fertility procedures. 
 
Walz’s office did not respond to a request for the comments. The spokesman for the Harris ticket pointed out that getting back the rights that Roe v Wade provided “is the platform. This is the stance of the ticket.