"Today, Governor Walz signed three deeply concerning bills into law," said John Helmberger, Minnesota Family Council CEO. "Governor Walz says he wants Minnesota to be the best state in the nation for kids to grow up in — yet each of these bills puts Minnesota children further at risk."
Minnesota Family Council CEO John Helmberger told The Daily Wire that the organization appreciated the unanimous vote and expressed hope that both parties would work to protect children from exploitation. “We’re also extremely grateful that this amendment was adopted unanimously; that’s a great expression of the desire of legislators in both parties to protect children from exploitation,” he remarked. “However, we wish it hadn’t come to this point; we wish that the authors of this bill would have realized the potentially extremely dangerous direction this legislation would lead, and corrected it before it got to the House floor.”
Helmberger added that some lawmakers had told their constituents that the Minnesota Family Council was “misleading” the public on the dangers from the loophole for pedophiles offered by the initial amendment. “Yesterday’s unanimous vote shows that our concerns were grounded in fact, and Minnesota legislators realized that,” he continued. “We hope this is the start of a new bipartisan drive to protect Minnesota’s kids from exploitation.”
This week the Minnesota House of Representatives passed an omnibus education finance bill with a provision that would exclude religious colleges and universities from participating in the state’s PSEO program. This change would affect thousands of students and their families and would blatantly discriminate against faith-based institutions. The Senate companion bill does not currently contain this language, but the Senate education policy bill does.
Roughly one in four PSEO students in Minnesota take classes at a religious college or university. They are not required to take courses at a religious school, but choose to do so. For some, this decision is driven by a desire to pursue particular programs and courses. For others it is based on location, ease of transfer to their target school, or the school’s values. In each case, it is a choice that is freely made for the sake of pursuing the best educational options for their family and their circumstances.
The state is not required to offer postsecondary enrollment options. Minnesota is one of only a handful of states that does. This program makes college more affordable and gives students the opportunity to begin working on toward a degree while still in high school. If the state chooses to fund this program, it does not get to discriminate against religious schools, which is exactly what this bill would do.
On Thursday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ended the FDA’s approval of mail-order abortions. This most recent twist in a long back and forth court battle over the abortion pill means that while the mifepristone abortion pill is, unfortunately, still legal in the U.S., it is once again under stricter regulations, including a requirement for in-person distribution. The Biden Administration has said that it intends to appeal to the Supreme Court with the goal of keeping mail-order DIY abortions legal.
The Fifth Circuit’s ruling partially upheld an earlier decision from U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a federal judge in Texas. Although it stopped distribution of the abortion pill by mail, the Fifth Circuit blocked enforcement of the rest of Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling that would have banned mifepristone abortions entirely.
Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling came out last Friday in response to a lawsuit from Alliance Defending Freedom and the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a group that has been fighting the FDA’s irresponsible approval of the RU-486 abortion pill regimen for the past 20 years. In 2002, the group petitioned the FDA to reconsider its approval of the abortion pill regimen. The FDA denied the petition in 2016, at which point it allowed even more lax oversight of the abortion pill regimen. It denied another petition in 2021 and lifted in-person requirements, allowing the abortion pill to be distributed by mail.
“This is how I spent my shift that day, holding him,” Jean told us. “I was gazing at his perfect face as he took his last breaths and passed to the next life.”
The rest of Jean’s story will leave you outraged. Why? Because the baby in question had survived an abortion and was given no medical care, to ensure that he died.
Baby Boy Doe’s story comes from a registered nurse named Jean who previously worked in the NICU (newborn intensive care unit) at a large hospital in the Twin Cities. Jean was asked to attend an abortion since the pregnancy was far enough along that a live birth was possible and her training may be required.
The mother-to-be had tragically just been diagnosed with cancer and been told – incorrectly – that to undergo cancer treatment she must terminate her pregnancy. She was judged to be about 23 weeks gestation, right around the earliest point of viability, but no ultrasound was ordered to confirm this guess or the position of the baby in the uterus.
