Alliance for a Better Minnesota Announces Abortion-Themed Crop Art for MN State Fair

St. Paul, MN - Today, Alliance for a Better Minnesota announced its entry in the 2022 Minnesota State Fair Crop Art Competition with a submission that depicts Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen in his own words threatening to ban abortion in Minnesota.

"Scott Jensen said that he would try to ban abortion in Minnesota and even previously said that he wanted to ban abortion without exceptions for rape or incest," said Marissa Luna, Executive Director of Alliance for a Better Minnesota. "Minnesotans deserve to know what's at stake, and we're taking every chance we get to highlight Jensen's extreme plan for Minnesota and remind Minnesotans that Scott Jensen is not the leader we need."

The crop art submission can be viewed here and at the State Fair from Aug. 25 – Sept. 5.

In an MPR interview in March 2022, Scott Jensen said that he would ban abortion in Minnesota without exceptions for rape or incest.

Jensen even said he'd throw a party after restricting access to abortion. In a video from a St.Thomas College Republicans meeting in December 2021, Scott Jensen said, "If I get a chance to sign a pro-life piece of legislation, we're not just going to sign it, we're going to have a party."

Scott Jensen has a long anti-choice record in the Minnesota Senate and supported legislation in 2017 with restrictive licensing guidelines for abortion facilities. And he voted to restrict access to abortions by defunding organizations that perform abortions and receive taxpayer funding.

Jensen also received a 100% rating from an extreme anti-choice organization, Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.

Scott Jensen's running mate, Matt Birk, is just as extreme.

In a video from June 2022 of Matt Birk speaking at a National Right to Life conference, he celebrated the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, compared safe, legal abortion to slavery, and said, "women used to not be able to vote, now we let them drive." He also reiterated that he doesn't believe that rape victims should get able to get abortions and said that "if a woman is unexpectedly pregnant, she could be the answer to someone's prayer."

In the same speech, Matt Birk promised that he and Scott Jensen would work to pass laws that ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. Scott Jensen defended Birk's comments in an interview on WCCO and praised Matt Birk's refusal to "back off" from his extreme anti-choice positions on abortion.

Scott Jensen and Matt Birk's extreme stances on abortion are at odds with the sixty percent of Minnesota voters who say abortion should be legal.