Statement on the Fourth Anniversary of the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
Four years ago, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Roe was fundamental and transformative, establishing a person's legal right to an abortion. I honor and recognize the strength, bravery, and generational care and visioning that it took to get to Roe — and the individual and collective universe of possibilities that Roe made a reality. Roe existed for 49 years. For 49 years, generations grew up never having to imagine a country where the government could force them to carry a pregnancy against their will. That is what was lost. Its loss is catastrophic, profound, and deeply felt — whether you live in a state where abortion is legal or not, this ruling changed healthcare and bodily autonomy for everyone.
What’s Been Happening
In the years since, the human cost has become impossible to ignore. Research presented in 2026 found that in the states that enacted abortion bans after Dobbs, there have been 478 excess infant deaths and 59 excess pregnancy-associated deaths — deaths that would not have happened had people retained the right to make their own healthcare decisions. Many people who seek or receive an abortion are already parents, so when access is denied, families are forced to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term while navigating additional strain on resources that were already stretched thin. These are not abstractions. They are preventable tragedies, and they were entirely foreseeable.
We are in an escalating and intensifying crisis of reproductive injustice, and it does not stop at the courthouse. The same impulse that drove the Court to overturn Roe — that some bodies are not entitled to make their own decisions — is now being carried out against pregnant and postpartum people in ICE detention, where the government denies people care it is legally and constitutionally obligated to provide. A woman from Burnsville has spent months in ICE detention in Texas fighting for a surgery her own doctors scheduled before she was detained, and was denied humanitarian parole to come home and get it. Several pregnant people have miscarried while in ICE detention. Pregnant teenagers — survivors of sexual assault, some as young as 13 — are reportedly being moved across state lines into places where they would have no ability to access abortion care if they needed it. And at a Louisiana detention facility, a former assistant warden is alleged to have repeatedly sexually abused a woman in custody, while three transgender detainees there have come forward with their own allegations of abuse — allegations consistent with a pattern this country has documented and failed to confront for over a decade. This is morally reprehensible. It is almost certainly unconstitutional. And it is happening with our tax dollars, in our names.
Local Governments Are Truly a Last Line of Defense
While I alone cannot solve for the widescale harm of reproductive injustice, I have remained committed to using my governing power everywhere it can reach. Since 2022, the Hennepin County Board has directed $7 million toward abortion access, gender-affirming care, and birth justice — because the same Board Action I authored that year, affirming the gender identity and expression of every person who receives Hennepin County services, has to mean something beyond the page it's written on. In 2023, during the legislative trifecta, I testified for the Protect Reproductive Options Act and the Out-of-State Conversion Therapy Ban, because Minnesotans deserved that right in writing, and because trans people and their families deserved somewhere to go. In 2024, I led the Board's declaration of Hennepin as a Safe County for our LGBTQIA+ community. None of it is enough on its own, but I am proud that it has produced something real: in 2025, a 172% increase in patients from outside Minnesota seeking gender-affirming care here, and zero people on a waitlist for that care anywhere in the state.
I remain committed, too, to the work that doesn't always make headlines but determines whether reproductive justice is real in people's lives: keeping HCMC open and sustained for generations to come, as the last public safety-net hospital in our region and a place that will not turn anyone away; preventing and mitigating domestic violence across Hennepin County; and advancing the well-being of every child in our community. I will keep working to make Hennepin County an employer that supports women and families, and to use our platform and power at the Capitol to advance legislation that protects women, families, and trans and nonbinary people.
Minnesota remains a reproductive health haven, and trans and nonbinary people have sought refuge here because of it. In 2023, alongside the Protect Reproductive Options Act, Minnesota passed the Out-of-State Conversion Therapy Ban and became a legal "trans refuge" — protecting people who travel here for gender-affirming care, and the providers who deliver it, from being reached by hostile laws in their home states. The conditions that brought people here are not abstract: families with trans kids have left states that banned their children's care and rebuilt their lives in Minnesota, and our providers have seen care-seekers from neighboring states climb by double digits as more of the country closes its doors. Our clinics are also receiving more out-of-state patients seeking abortion care than ever before, and our state constitution protects that right. But I will not pretend that access here is equal. It is hardest to reach for people holding multiple marginalized identities — people of color, low-income families, immigrants, trans and nonbinary people, and young people — and reproductive justice that only works for some of us is not reproductive justice at all.
Call to Action
On this anniversary, I'm asking you to join me — not just in grief, but in action. Congress must codify the right to abortion into federal law, and it must answer for what is happening to pregnant and postpartum people in this country's custody. Minnesota must keep funding the clinics, navigators, and providers now carrying the weight of an entire region's need, because that need will only grow as more states close their doors. And Hennepin County will keep directing real dollars toward abortion access, gender-affirming care, and birth justice, because local government is so often the last line of defense for our rights.
Here’s a short list of actions you can consider taking — in honor of those who have come before us that paved the way for Roe and in honor of our commitment and vision of moving away from a reproductive reality that is coercive and violent towards a reproductive future that is safe, healthy, and caring:
Share your story. It seems simple but it is significant. Part of how authoritarianism flourishes is the suppression of our individual and community narratives. Together, we must resist the urge to give into silence and numbness – because numbing our pain also numbs our shared humanity, and it is through the collective wisdom in our bodies and ancestral storylines that we will get through to the other side. Because together, we come from powerful, loving, and resourceful storylines. Our cultures and ancestors have found ways to construct creativity from pain, joy from fear, and hope from oppression.
Support your local clinics. Offer your time, money, or skills. Clinics still need volunteers to escort clients safely through their doors, table at community events, or make safer sex kits.
I remain in this fight with you: speaking our truth, caring with compassion, and leading toward accountability and justice.
With love and care,
Irene