Along with his addition to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential ticket on August 6, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz stepped into the political highlight—and since then, maybe nothing has been extra clearly illuminated than his vivid file on reproductive rights.
In one in every of his first marketing campaign occasions, Walz clarified that “freedom,” to him, contains “the liberty to make your personal well being care choices,” sharing the non-public expertise that he and his spouse Gwen had with in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Inside hours of his nomination, far-right activists used Walz’s assist of a legislation stipulating free menstrual merchandise in public colleges (!) as fodder for (what they seen as) an insult: a meme of his face on a tampon field plastered with the phrase “Tampon Tim.” And loads of headlines reminded us, too, that he’d joined Harris in her current go to to a Minnesota Deliberate Parenthood—the primary time a vp has publicly visited an abortion supplier.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than reproductive rights orgs just like the Nationwide Group for Girls, Reproductive Freedom for All, and Deliberate Parenthood launched statements celebrating his choice, calling Walz “a longtime champion of sexual and reproductive well being” and naming the duo “probably the most pro-reproductive freedom presidential ticket in US historical past.”
There’s arguably no stronger sign that Harris might ship to the general public concerning the significance of reproductive rights in her marketing campaign than the selection of Walz as her operating mate. Learn on to be taught what he’s stated about abortion, IVF, and extra, and the way he’s backed up his phrases with motion.
On abortion
Walz was the primary governor within the nation to signal abortion rights into state legislation after the autumn of Roe, making certain that Minnesotans would retain autonomy over their very own well being care choices irrespective of who sits on future courts.
However he didn’t cease there: Subsequent, he signed a “protect invoice,” defending individuals who journey from out-of-state to have abortions in Minnesota, in addition to their suppliers, from any authorized assaults or prison penalties from elsewhere—an enormous deal on condition that Minnesota is surrounded by states with abortion bans or extremely restrictive insurance policies, like Iowa, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas.
Walz additionally took steps to undo laws geared toward limiting reproductive freedom, signing a invoice that removes a bunch of abortion purple tape, like a mandated 24-hour ready interval between counseling and the process, and a provision that an abortion must be carried out by a doctor (all of which was additionally beforehand deemed unconstitutional by a Minnesota district court docket decide). Plus, Walz has made strikes to tug state funding from so-called “disaster being pregnant facilities,” that are broadly identified to offer deceptive data in an try and sway folks away from abortion.
Talking candidly on abortion with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in March, Walz stated, “I feel previous white males have to discover ways to speak about this a bit of extra. And I feel the largest factor is: Hearken to ladies. Hearken to what they’re saying.” At one in every of Walz’s first marketing campaign occasions, he practiced what he’d preached, responding to an viewers member chanting, “My physique, my alternative!” with out lacking a beat: “Rattling proper, it’s.”
On fertility and IVF
Walz has spoken on a number of events about his assist of IVF as a subject that’s related not solely to folks making an attempt to get pregnant, but in addition to anybody who has one in every of these people of their life—and Walz, of all folks, ought to know, as a result of he and his spouse struggled with infertility for seven years.