Abortion battle threatens

05/11/2006

Senate avoids expected debate, but lawmakers are grappling with divisive issue as session winds down

BY RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER
Pioneer Press

Without much public discussion, the abortion debate has crept into this year’s end-of-session legislative drama, a battle that Minnesota lawmakers on both sides of the issue have been preparing for for weeks.

In its budget bill, the House approved two powerful anti-abortion measures. One of them challenges a 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling mandating the state to pay for low-income women’s abortions.

The two anti-abortion measures were expected to appear on the Senate floor Monday and again Wednesday, but at the last moment Senate leaders pulled human services legislation from the agendaand avoided the debate.

It’s not clear whether the two anti-abortion measures will become law. But it is clear that lawmakers will continue grappling with the bitterly divisive issue in the last two weeks of the session.

The fight involves more than a debate on the merits of the anti-abortion provisions and lawmakers’ deeply held beliefs about abortion. It also involves legislative maneuvering, procedural rulings, divided loyalties and hurt relations among lawmakers, leaders and lobbyists.

Along with the measure involving state-funded abortions, anti-abortion advocates are pursuing a measure to require a public record of the number of times judges are asked to grant permission for girls to have abortions without their parents’ consent and the number of times permission is granted. Without the so-called judicial bypass, minor girls must have their parents’ permission to obtain abortions.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate have been watching the Senate action on the measures carefully, even though senators have not mentioned the word “abortion” in debate for days.

“Everybody in the building knows it’s about abortion. But no one outside the building knows it’s about abortion,” said Tim Stanley, senior director of government and public affairs for Planned Parenthood.

The majority of legislators in the GOP-controlled House and the DFL-controlled Senate are anti-abortion, as is the governor. That means that, if given the chance, they probably would want the two provisions to become law.

But a majority of legislators in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor caucus of the Senate support legal abortion and oppose the two provisions. With 38 Senate DFLers, their party controls the Senate.

They are led, however, by Majority Leader Dean Johnson of Willmar. He is anti-abortion, as are five other Senate Democrats.

“We have been struggling with the pro-choice/pro-life issue in our caucus,” said Johnson.

He may be facing a tough re-election fight this year and need to boost his credibility with social conservatives in his west central Minnesota district.

Many senators expected a move to attach the anti-abortion measures to the Senate budget bill Monday, but, after debate behind closed doors, DFL senators voted to remove the health and human services portion of the budget from the bill. That made the expected abortion provisions less relevant to the budget bill that remained.

The maneuvering outraged many Senate Republicans who are against abortion.

“Can’t you just take votes around here?” an outraged Senate Minority Leader Dick Day, R-Owatonna, asked at the time. “What, do we drag this on for another day? I got time.”

On Wednesday, the Senate was to vote on the health and human services budget. Many believed there would be a move to amend the abortion language to that measure. But because the budget bill’s author, Minneapolis Sen. Linda Berglin, fell ill, that vote has been delayed, Johnson said.

Wednesday afternoon, it was not clear what the Senate would have done if the vote had taken place. There would still be ways to keep the two measures from becoming law even if they did end up in the health and human services bill.

But abandoning the anti-abortion issues entirely might be unwise.

“Politically, it would be very difficult for the Senate to put it off indefinitely,” said Andrea Rau, a lobbyist for the anti-abortion group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life. She said the proposed measures are reasonable and supported by the majority of Minnesotans.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life has 241 chapters across the state and thousands of active contributors, who in the past have rallied at the Capitol, flooded phone lines and loudly made their views heard. Those forces have not yet been mobilized this year to force a Senate vote on the anti-abortion measures, but that may be coming.

Stanley,of Planned Parenthood, said those who oppose the measures might be able to keep what he calls “the most restrictive abortion law in the history of the state” from becoming law. But he said there also are “countless opportunities” for the measures’ supporters to try to force the issue.