In the days and weeks since the lopsidedly conservative Supreme Court nullified the federal right to reproductive health care, the state of Minnesota has quickly become a crucial nexus of abortion access for pregnant people across the Midwest thanks to its constitutionally enshrined guarantee of reproductive rights. Predictably, if depressingly, the fight to preserve this legally protected measure of bodily autonomy has become one of the — if not the — main issue in state’s upcoming gubernatorial race, where the GOP-endorsed candidate Scott Jensen and his running mate, former NFL star Matt Birk, have made their desire to control what pregnant people do with their bodies one of the centerpieces of their campaign.
While Jensen, a licensed physician who has been investigated by the state’s medical board five separate times for various allegations of medical quackery, has awkwardly worked to publicly downplay his initial promise to ban abortions in the state, Birk, his lieutenant governor candidate, has thrown that ostensible tack toward the center into messy, misogynistic disarray.
