Minnesota Pro-Life Advocates Stop Democrat Measure for Abortions Up to Birth

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) just did the impossible.  Despite a determined democratic trifecta, we defeated an attempt to put an abortion-up-to-birth constitutional amendment onto our ballot.

We did it through an all-out grassroots and media campaign to reach “not us” with the truth about our extreme abortion policy.

In early 2023, the Minnesota legislature – with a very slim trifecta of just 4 votes in the House, 1 vote in the Senate, and a ready pen in the Governor’s Mansion – passed the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, giving every Minnesotan the fundamental right in statute to abortion throughout pregnancy with no protections for women, parents, or the unborn.  They repealed many of our pro-life laws, including Women’s Right to Know, our doctor-only law for surgical abortions, and our Positive Alternatives Grant Program.  While they did not repeal our Parental Notification Law, it is currently enjoined and is not being enforced.

We know most Americans don’t agree with these extreme policies.  Our polling confirmed that when people know the truth about our laws, they overwhelmingly oppose them.  They just don’t know – and, really, they can’t believe – what those laws are.

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We needed to educate, encourage, and equip our members to go out and share how extreme our law is.  And we especially needed them to reach “not us.”

Pro-lifers already agree that Minnesota’s PRO Act is horrific.  We don’t need to convince them.  And they don’t need to convince each other.

What we do need to do is effectively and confidently talk to “not us” and go boldly out to change the culture, one conversation at a time, thousands of conversations happening at the same time.

Last summer, particularly in districts where legislators who should not have voted for these policies did so anyway, MCCL made it a point to be at the first day of their county fair to talk to people about our newly-passed extreme laws.  We offered materials that clearly explained the laws, and we helped “us” to present the info so that “not us” wanted to learn more.

We also held a series of open meetings across the state that talked about the PRO Act and the loss of common-sense protections for women and children.  But the meat of these meetings was giving people conversational tools and pro-life apologetics to reach out to “not us.”  We dedicated space in every issue of MCCL News to cover apologetics and conversation starters.  And we used social media to bolster and reinforce all of it.

How do we have calm, civil, compassionate conversations with people who disagree with us?

We listen with our mouths closed.

We don’t trap, bait, or zing people with our pithy airtight pro-life apologetics.  Silencing the person with whom we are trying to converse is not helpful.

We don’t even try to win the discussion.

We ask questions for understanding.

We try to find common ground – because there’s LOTS of common ground.

With abortion-up-to-birth with no reasonable protections for mothers or unborn children at any gestational age, we can find common ground.  With leaving babies who survive abortion or who are born with disabilities to die without reasonable medical intervention, we can find common ground.  With no parental involvement or protection from abusers and traffickers forcing young women to get secret abortions, we can find common ground.  We can all agree that women in difficult and unexpected pregnancies, women experiencing the poverty of single motherhood, need and deserve our help.

MCCL began to recreate a culture where we can talk about hard issues in a calm, compassionate, and civil way.  Where we can allow others to safely say what they really think without judging them or even attempting to convert them.  A culture where conversations take days, months, and years.  A culture of conversion by conversation.

Finally, MCCL produced and ran a television and digital media ad for the last four weeks of the 2024 legislative session, right up to the day that the Minnesota legislature adjourned sine die without passing the abortion-up-to-birth ERA despite their democratic trifecta.

This ad does many things that build on our ongoing efforts.  It models conversation: one woman discovers and shares the law.  It allows anyone to feel like they are a part of the conversation.  Neither woman states where she stands on the issue; one simply notes that her pro-choice friends wouldn’t agree with that law and that it doesn’t fit with her values.

The ad can be seen at mccl.org/wayoutthere.

This ad was the culmination of a multi-pronged grassroots and multi-media advertising effort to get people talking about our abortion law, from our first steps in the spring of 2023 all the way through defeating the ERA in 2024 and now moving forward to change the culture and change our laws.

In May 2024, a KSTP (ABC) poll came out just before the end of our legislative session that showed 3 amazing results:

• 64% want abortion to be a separate question from the ERA;
• We are in a dead heat between those who want abortion in our state constitution and those who do not;
• 51% disapprove of the PRO Act.

That last question proves that our strategy is working.  In a culture where most do not have the bandwidth for politics and legislation, they now not only know about the law but disapprove of it!

Creating a pro-life culture cannot be done without reaching out to “not us.”  We must re-learn how to have winsome, compassionate, thought-provoking conversations with EVERYONE.

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