Reproduction freedom has been on my heart and mind – and I know it’s been on yours too. As a community, we are grieving and we are angry, but we’re not going anywhere. 

Reproductive freedom was on the ballot. We are awakening to a new era of reproductive oppression and a newly emboldened national anti-choice movement. These extremists gained political power in a direct threat to the lives of women, girls, and birthing people everywhere.

Our collective work has resulted in important reasons for hope in Minnesota. The Minnesota Senate remains in the hands of pro-choice champions, with the election of Ann Johnson Stewart. Pro-choice voters returned powerful champions to the Minnesota House and all Women Winning endorsed incumbents were re-elected. We held ground in a very competitive seat in Coon Rapids with Representative-elect Kari Rehrauer. While the MN House remains at a virtual tie, we did not let extremists win outright. Be reminded that our Governor’s office remains in the hands of pro-choice champions Governor Walz and Lt. Governor Flanagan. These champions are experienced fighters. They’ve enshrined reproductive rights at the state level and will not let us go back.

Dr. Kelly Morrison is heading to Washington DC as the first pro-choice OB-GYN to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. She joins our pro-choice champions Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Tina Smith, Representative Betty McCollum, Representative Ilhan Omar, and Representative Angie Craig, who also won a hard fought battle.

Our work ahead is critical. Trump is not without powerful allies, including a conservative Supreme Court, an anti-choice U.S. Senate, and powerful anti-choice extremists at state and local levels. This is our reality. We must be prepared. We cannot look away. There’s so much to feel, it’s hard to know what to say. We’ve already been grieving the unjust deaths of women and girls due to draconian abortion bans, even as the news cycle moved on. It’s easy to feel alone and frightened, without others who share our beliefs.

The truth is on our side. We must reject the pervasive culture that tells us to feel shame for making the reproductive choices that are best for us. We will not be silent and we will not be shamed. Our bodies and futures belong to us, always. We must build stronger bonds with our neighbors and everyone who is committed to the fight for reproductive freedom. The stakes are too high to do anything else but fight in any way that we can, every single day – and fight together.

I remain ready to fight for reproductive freedom and resist all efforts to undermine bodily autonomy. Are you?

In Solidarity,

Nevada Littlewolf

With the 2024 presidential race called, new faces have emerged out of local races, marking several historic firsts in Minnesota.

That includes electing a majority of women to Minnesota’s congressional delegation. Here’s a roundup of Minnesota’s firsts and would-have-been firsts.

The Minnesota Senate will stay in DFL control, while the outcome for the state House of Representatives remained uncertain Wednesday morning — with the potential for a 67-67 tie.

Control of the Senate hinged on the outcome of a single special election Tuesday, in District 45 in the western Twin Cities metro area. Former DFL state Sen. Ann Johnson Stewart defeated Republican Kathleen Fowke with 52 percent of the vote, to maintain DFL control of the seat and the Senate. The chamber had been tied 33-33 after former Democratic state Sen. Kelly Morrison stepped down earlier this year to run for Congress.

The picture was far less clear for the Minnesota House. Results from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s website early Wednesday showed each party winning or leading in the race for 67 seats in the House — with at least two seats poised for publicly funded recounts due to a margin of less than 0.5 percent. The DFL had held a 70-64 majority at the end of last session.

If the current results hold, it would not be the first time the Minnesota House has been evenly divided. The same situation happened in 1979.

More than two years after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the federal constitutional right to an abortion, voters in 10 states cast ballots on whether to cement reproductive rights in their state constitutions.

Measures to protect abortion access will pass in Arizona and Missouri, where citizens effectively voted to overturn their state’s abortion bans. Abortion rights supporters are hopeful this will lead to a widespread increase in access to reproductive care in those states.

Similar measures will pass in Colorado, New York, Maryland, Montana and Nevada, cementing or expanding current abortion access. And measures to protect abortion failed in Florida, where the procedure is banned six weeks into pregnancy, and South Dakota, where it is banned, except to save the life of the mother.

In Nebraska, an amendment cementing the state’s current 12-week abortion ban in the state constitution will pass, while a competing amendment to codify the right to an abortion will fail, according to CNN projections.

Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride won the state’s only House seat Tuesday, NBC News projects, making her the first openly transgender person elected to Congress. 

McBride, a Democrat, defeated Republican John Whalen III, taking 57.8% of the vote with 95% of the vote in. 

“Tonight is a testament to Delawareans that here in our state of neighbors, we judge candidates based on their ideas and not their identities,” McBride said at Delaware’s Democratic election night celebration Tuesday night. 

She thanked her friends and family and her late husband, Andy Cray, who died of cancer in 2014, just days after their wedding.

“My time with Andy reinforced for me a simple truth, that hope as an emotion, hope as a phenomenon, only makes sense in the face of hardship,” she said. “While at this moment in America’s history, hope sometimes feels hard to come by, we must never forget that we are the beneficiaries of seemingly impossible change.”