Last year, Bluestem Prairie posted about former Minnesota state representative Tim Miller's career change, from law maker to Pro Life Action Ministries satrap.
His attempt to make tiny Prinsburg, his hometown, become Minnesota's first pro-life "sanctuary city" was aborted by the town council before 2022 ended.
That failed effort is in the news again this weekend with the one-year anniversary of the repeal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. At the Rochester Post Bulletin, Dené K. Dryden reports in One year post-Roe, Minnesota's anti-abortion organizations have been playing defense against new state laws:
. . .With Roe gone, Minnesota's anti-abortion organizations turned their focus to state-level measures, especially during the Minnesota Legislature's 2023 session. PLAM Action, the outreach arm of Pro-Life Action Ministries of Minnesota, began work to establish sanctuary cities for the unborn, a measure taken by dozens of cities across the U.S., mostly in Texas.
"We were going to move forward with that strategy if things turned favorably our way," said Tim Miller, executive director of PLAM Action. "We started working toward sanctuary cities — we call them life cities."
However, Gov. Tim Walz signed the Protect Reproductive Options Act in January, which prohibits local units of government from enforcing laws that aim to "regulate an individual's ability to freely exercise" the reproductive health care, including abortion, that the bill protects.
"While we may have still had a pathway, it was probably not a realistic one, because it would have been too easy for the state of Minnesota to crash down on a community that wanted to do this," Miller said. . . .
That's Miller's version. A review of news reports suggests that life cities weren't getting much traction in the North Star state, though it's probably a good thing for Miller to remind voters of the threat PLAM posed before the DFL trifecta.
As we posted in Star Tribune editorial board praises Prinsburg for rejecting Miller's post-legislative career builder:
Perhaps Bluestem is overly optimistic to fancy that retiring Minnesota state representative Tim Miller has met his Waterloo with the rejection of his anti-reproductive freedom ordinance by his hometown's city council.
We mostly recently posted about this in Prinsburg rejects PLAM ordinance update: tasty tidbits from the latest Star Tribune coverage and West Central Tribune: City Council in Prinsburg, MN rejects proposed abortion ordinance.
But at least he's getting the attention he deserves from the editorial board at the Star Tribune.
Some of the wisdom in A failed try to stoke abortion controversy:
. . . unlike Texas, Prinsburg is in a state where no less an authority than the Minnesota Supreme Court has held, in the 1995 case Doe v. Gomez, that the state Constitution includes the right to terminate a pregnancy.
That did not dissuade Miller, who told a Star Tribune reporter, "This is what God is calling me to do." He had arranged for the deep pockets of the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit law firm specializing in culture-war issues that does not publicly disclose its funding sources, to defend Prinsburg if it had faced court challenges.
Before the Prinsburg City Council decision, Miller said he planned to spread this campaign to deprive women of their constitutional right to other rural communities. The intention, he told the Star Tribune, is not to penalize the woman who has an abortion but to stop "the animals who tell her that's OK and profit from it."
This, of course, presumes that women are easily led astray and couldn't possibly have determined the risks for themselves and come to their own conclusion that the time is not right for them to undertake childbearing. It is an insulting premise, and most Minnesotans have made clear they reject such thinking. . . .
One of the best ways to defend those specific rights would be to enshrine them in statute.
The state Legislature now has a reproductive-rights majority. It should use that majority to provide statutory protection under Minnesota law without delay.
That happened. Dryden reports that following the session, Miller and PLAM's "outreach is happening mostly in religious spaces."
We'll keep an eye out for moments when Miller has boundary issues.
Related posts
- Star Tribune editorial board praises Prinsburg for rejecting Miller's post-legislative career builder
- Prinsburg rejects PLAM ordinance update: tasty tidbits from the latest Star Tribune coverage
- West Central Tribune: City Council in Prinsburg, MN rejects proposed abortion ordinance
- Forum News Service: Prinsburg's Texas pro-life hold 'em ordinance gets more ink
- StribGuy: Small Minnesota town may become focus of abortion fight 'cause of Tim Miller
- MN News Network: Prinsburg in west-central MN is “launch site” for new anti-abortion strategy
- Tuesday, Prinsburg City Council heard Tim Miller propose PLAM Action anti-abortion ordinance
- Retiring state rep Miller to push unconstitutional local ordinances for new PLAM Action job.
- Tall grass prairie? State representative Tim Miller goes to Moorhead for grassroots organizing
- Retiring Rep. Tim Miller will work for Brian Gibson at Pro-Life Action Ministries sister group
- We won't have Tim Miller to kick around anymore--at least as a MN House member
- New House Republican Tim Miller shares unique understanding of gas tax in legislative update
- State rep Tim Miller: MN state public officials beholden to radical anti-livestock enviro groups
Image: The town sign for Prinsburg. Via Alchetron entry for Prinsburg.
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