A group of Minnesota doctors filed a lawsuit Tuesday against their Democrat governor for restricting their constitutional rights while allowing abortion facilities to continue to kill unborn babies in elective abortions during the coronavirus crisis.
The Thomas More Society, a pro-life legal firm, is representing the doctors, nurses, pro-life organizations and Christians in their lawsuit against Gov. Tim Walz, Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm, Planned Parenthood and others, PJ Media reports.
“When it comes to the right to have an abortion, the State has decided that this right is sacrosanct, and that no COIVD-19 prevention measure can be allowed to curtail the right to abortion in any way — no matter how minor the burdens that might be imposed on abortion providers or their patients, and no matter how many lives might be saved from requiring abortion providers to switch from surgical abortion to medication abortion in an effort to conserve PPE [personal protective equipment] and increase social distancing,” the lawsuit states.
Like many other state leaders, Walz and Malcolm restricted elective and non-essential surgeries, religious gatherings and more to preserve personal protective equipment (PPE) and prevent further spread of the virus. However, they allowed elective abortions to continue during the pandemic.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs said Walz and Malcolm violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by making an exception for abortions.
“A State may curtail the exercise of constitutional rights to prevent the spread of a deadly pandemic, but it cannot give special status to politically favored rights such as abortion when rights that actually appear in the Constitution — such as the right to the free exercise of the religion and the right of the people to peaceably assemble—are being subordinated to the State’s COVID-19 prevention measures,” the lawsuit states.
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One of the plaintiffs is an orthopedic surgeon who, in complying with Walz’s order, had to lay off 90-percent of his employees and stop all elective surgeries, according to the report. Others include 16 Christians who accuse the governor of preventing them “from exercising their constitutional right to hold in-person worship services.”
Plaintiffs also include the AALFA Family Clinic and nine of its doctors and nurses, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Pro-Life Action Ministries, the report states.
In the lawsuit, they accused Walz and Malcolm of treating the so-called right to abortion as “absolute — to the point that it allows abortion patients to opt for a particular method of abortion that consumes more PPE, even when that PPE is needed to prevent others from falling sick and dying during a catastrophic global pandemic.”
The lawsuit also argues that abortions should not be considered a constitutional right at all.
“Abortion providers might be justified in holding these views if abortion actually were a constitutional right. But abortion is not a constitutional right. There is nothing in the language of the Constitution that even remotely suggests that women have a constitutional right to abort their fetuses,” it states.
Thomas More Society special counsel Erick Kaardal slammed the governor’s actions in a statement earlier this week.
“Not only is the governor’s action in allowing elective surgical abortion dangerously unsafe, but critically and irresponsibly wasteful,” Kaardal said. “These elective abortion procedures take personal protective equipment away from hospitals, clinics, emergency rooms, doctors, nurses, and others on the frontlines of trying to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus.”
The lawsuit challenges Walz’s decision to exempt abortion workers from executive orders that mandate social distancing as well.
