The following news release was issued today, Oct. 23.
ST. PAUL — Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota will honor one of its strongest allies in the business of destroying unborn babies. Gov. Mark Dayton will receive the abortion organization's Courage Award tonight at its "Celebrate!" gala in downtown Minneapolis.
"Abortion and abortion advocacy have become a cause of celebration for Planned Parenthood and its political partners," said Scott Fischbach, Executive Director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL), the state's oldest and largest pro-life organization. "Dayton has given them many reasons to praise him, having vetoed no less than seven pro-life measures passed by the Legislature in his first two years as governor."
In 2011, Dayton vetoed five major pro-life provisions: the Unborn Child Pain Prevention Act, a ban on taxpayer funding of abortion, bans on human cloning and taxpayer funding of human cloning, and protections to keep tax dollars away from family planning organizations (including Planned Parenthood) that are involved in abortion.
Dayton vetoed two more bills in 2012 that would have protected women's health and safety. One would have brought the state's six abortion facilities in line with the state's other outpatient surgical centers by requiring them to be licensed, and would have authorized the Minnesota Department of Health to perform inspections of abortion facilities. The other bill would have stopped dangerous "webcam" abortions by requiring that a physician be physically present when administering the drugs for a chemical abortion.
"Planned Parenthood is obviously grateful to Dayton for protecting its taxpayer funding and for blocking the state from licensing its new abortion megacenter—the nation's third largest—in St. Paul," Fischbach said. "Dayton has done Planned Parenthood's bidding in every case, at the expense of thousands of human lives. This is hardly anything to celebrate."
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood continues to kill thousands of unborn children in Minnesota, year after year, and wound women physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The state's largest abortionist killed 3,608 unborn babies last year. That's an average of nearly 10 unborn babies killed every single day; less than one percent were in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.
