Reproductive rights experts in Minnesota say the state will stay a haven for abortion rights amid a second Donald Trump administration, and could become even more of a destination for people seeking care.
Healthcare providers and advocates say further restrictions to abortion are likely on the horizon with President-elect Trump headed back to the White House next month alongside a GOP-controlled Congress.
Local organizations are preparing their communities for what’s to come, and vow to continue offering reproductive health services and resources. Some worry that even though reproductive care isn’t expected to change in Minnesota, Trump’s political rhetoric, including anti-immigrant remarks, could cause some Minnesotans to avoid seeking care.
“Not only is our community worried about mass deportations or the impacts of removing citizenship, but people who have again these intersections of identities are also worried about getting their access to healthcare,” said Rae Rowe, executive director of the Paper Lantern Project, which focuses on reproductive rights and gender justice in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. “What we’re worried about is people who need medical assistance might not be asking for it out of fear.”
What’s on the horizon?
The U.S. Supreme Court undid nearly 50 years of abortion access by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, the landmark 1973 case in which the court ruled that the U.S. Constitution protected a woman’s right to an abortion. The move returned the regulation of abortion to the states, prompting a flurry of bills restricting abortion across the country; “trigger laws” outlawing abortion went into effect in 10 states.
In the months following the decision, several more states enacted full abortion bans – 13 states currently ban abortion completely – and others enacted laws that limit abortion access to within six to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Some states, including Minnesota, enacted legislation to protect abortion rights, and others, including California, Michigan and Vermont, asked voters to decide whether to enshrine abortion access in their state constitutions.
Ruth Richardson, CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said several states’ restrictions resulted in reproductive health care and maternity health care deserts. The moves not only impacted abortion care, but also access to services like cancer screenings, family planning visits and mental health services that Planned Parenthood also provides. The problem is exacerbated in rural areas, creates more barriers for low-income individuals and has led to higher rates of maternal mortality, she said.
“You have spaces where people are oftentimes forced to travel three, four, five hours just to get access to care,” she said. “It’s really concerning that we’re at this place where it’s more dangerous to be pregnant today in the United States than it was 30 years ago.”
University of Minnesota political science professor Timothy Johnson said that despite assertions from Trump and many Republicans that states should determine their own abortion access, he anticipates that Trump loyalists and others will still pursue efforts to make obtaining an abortion more difficult nationwide. One of those ways is to reinvigorate the Comstock Act, a federal law passed in 1873 that criminalizes the transportation of “obscene” materials through the U.S. Postal Service. The act includes language that bans transporting drugs “for producing abortion.”
Medical abortions accounted for 63% of all abortions performed in the United States in 2023, according to a study from the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that focuses on sexual health and reproductive rights. Should the Trump administration revive enforcement of the Comstock Act, drugs like mifepristone, which blocks certain hormones in order to stop pregnancy, would be prevented from entering states like Minnesota that protect abortion access.
“So many abortions are not done surgically in the United States anymore because it is so much easier, less invasive and better for a woman’s body to have an abortion medicinally rather than surgically,” Johnson said. “If they are able to employ the Comstock Act to try to ban the shipping of this particular drug across state lines, that will significantly decrease the numbers inherently, because people will be very scared to actually put those pills in the mail for fear of breaking federal law and potentially facing large fines or facing federal prison time.”
A potential loophole around the Comstock Act, Johnson said, is the use of private delivery companies, which don’t experience the same level of oversight as the U.S. Postal Service.
“The question will be whether or not that ban would apply to private companies like FedEx and UPS or DHL or others, and time will tell as to whether or not any law that they might get passed to that effect would apply to those private companies,” he said.
How are people preparing?
Trump’s victory in last month’s presidential election followed a campaign that heavily stressed his desire to deport millions of migrants and to end granting citizenship to children born in the United States, among other policies.
That rhetoric and the cultural stigma around abortion and reproductive health care could produce a chilling effect on people seeking care, said Rowe.
“What we are concerned about is criminalization of getting access to healthcare and how that specifically impacts our immigrant and refugee community, who might already have a difficult time reaching out for help when they need it,” she said.
Rowe said the Paper Lantern Project and other groups are preparing for the incoming administration by combating misinformation, reminding community members that abortion remains legal in Minnesota and educating the public about health care access and what could happen in Trump’s second term.
That, Rowe said, involves talking about the privacy implications of apps that track someone’s menstrual cycle, pregnancy and abortion, and whether the data that’s collected could be used to prosecute people in states where abortion is illegal. It also includes providing access to medication like the Plan B pill, an emergency contraceptive, and discouraging people from hoarding the medication. Individual hoarding could limit the amount of medication available to organizations like the Paper Lantern Project and Planned Parenthood, Rowe said.
“We’re really encouraging people to think with a community mindset,” she said.
Many patients travel to Minnesota seeking care because it’s surrounded by states that have either banned abortion or restricted abortion access. Richardson expects that Trump’s second administration will make more attempts to restrict abortion access, and said Planned Parenthood plans to make things easier for people traveling to Minnesota for care.
Richardson said that involves boosting Planned Parenthood’s presence in communities along the state’s border, as well as introducing more abortion patient navigators, who help escort patients to their appointments. Navigators have helped 5,400 patients; 80% would not have made it to their destination without a navigator, she said.
“We’ve had a 110% increase in the number of people who are traveling from outside of our region to access care, so part of that is ensuring that we are doing the important work to cut down on the barriers that people have in terms of accessing care,” Richardson said. “We know that abortion bans don’t ban abortions for everyone. They ban them for people who don’t have the means and opportunity to travel for care.”
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