In early April, former Minnesota state Sen. Scott Jensen affirmed his long-standing opposition to reproductive rights. In a radio interview, Jensen explained that he believes in banning all abortions, with a minor caveat for instances in which “a mother’s life is in danger” after rape or incest. A few weeks later, after nine bruising ballot rounds at a Minnesota state GOP convention that banned flamethrowers but allowed some unambiguous antisemitism to sneak through, Jensen won his party’s backing to become the next Republican governor of Minnesota, a state that hasn’t had a GOP leader in over a decade.
Along with his equally anti-choice running mate, former Minnesota Viking Matt “abortion is not going to heal a rape victim” Birk, Jensen’s bid to unseat incumbent Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) this fall is a worrying rightward lurch. It outpaces even the extreme anti-abortion views of Tim Pawlenty, the last Republican to occupy Minnesota’s governor’s mansion. More importantly, it comes during an election year under the shadow of the Supreme Court’s looming decision to roll back Roe v. Wade and end the federal right to reproductive health care as we know it — a decision that would codify a regional trend that has already made Minnesota a de facto abortion oasis in a desert of states that provide few, if any accessible options for their own residents. To ban abortion in Minnesota, as the now-GOP endorsed Jensen/Birk campaign has promised to do, would not only deny crucial health care to residents of the state itself, but also to the millions of people in neighboring Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas, all of which have either total trigger bans or six-week bans ready to go into effect the moment Roe is repealed.
