Almanac: At the Capitol

For women interested in politics, Minnesota might be one of the best places to run for office.

According to the author, women now hold nearly 35% of the offices in the state legislature, with over 40% of the Minnesota senate seats. Not bad numbers considering only 25 years ago the number of women in state office had gone from one to seven. But in 2005 women accounted for over 50% of the state's population, yet we've still only filled one-third of the seats. We're catching up quickly, but how long until we finally hit equal representation? With groups like Hubert H. Humphrey Center on Women and Public Policy, the Minnesota Women's Political Caucus, and more partisan groups like the DFL Feminist Caucus and Minnesota Federation of Republican Women, that shouldn't be far away at all.

The 34th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade occured two weeks ago, and there could not have been a more stark difference in the way that day was commemorated than in the activities of the Minnesota and North Dakota legislature.

Here in Minnesota, while Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life picketed the Capitol, legislators like Sandy Pappas and Neva Walker were supporting plans to reduce abortions, such as promoting funding for family planning and extensive sex ed classes.

Across the border, North Dakota remembered the anniversary by hearing a handful of bills designed to end safe access to abortions, including making the procedure a felony at all times, even if the life of the mother is in danger.

Which approach is more likely to end abortions? One that goes to the root of the issue, providing support, education and contraception, or one that threatens with a life sentence in jail?

Prevention is always preferable to punishment.

This is just one of the many reasons I live in Minnesota and not in North Dakota. We address people before scoring political points.

2006 saw Women's Choice issues hold steady in the face of continued onslaught. Although I am grateful that bills such as the one banning clinics from using taxpayers money, or the bill to give pharmacists the right to refuse to provide birth control or emergency contraception never made it into law, I'm looking to 2007 as a time to roll back some of Governor Pawlenty's more onerous anti-choice legislation from his first term.

The first law that needs to be revisited is the 24-hour waiting period for women who have chosen to terminate their pregnancies. Hitched onto a circus bill by Republican Marty Seifert in 2003, the period requires women who have already spent a great deal of agonizing over their choice before coming to a decision to wait another 24 hours after visiting a doctor. Seifert may be knowledgeable about how to run a circus, as can be assumed by his quick rise through the MNGOP, but did not consider the effects that the bill would have on working or low income women seeking an abortion.

Working women and women without access to local clinics are forced to make the procedure a two-day ordeal. For women who are choosing to terminate a pregnancy due to not being able to care for a child financially Minnesota government is adding the expense of being away from home or missing time from work, adding yet another burden on lower income women who are meant to be protected by having abortion legal and accessible in the first place.

I hope that the new legislation will have a chance to reconsider the waiting period and look for information to see if the period is, in fact, having a positive effect on abortion in this state, or is more often adding extra burden an punishment to women choosing to seek out this alternative.