Maureen Reed: ‘Roe v. Wade is law of the land’
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 11:15 am
- 4 Comments
Maureen Reed. Photo: Reed for Congress, Flickr
In Minnesota’s notoriously conservative Sixth Congressional District, abortion politics are sure to play a big role in the November election. But as Rep. Michele Bachmann and state Sen. Tarryl Clark rack up endorsements in the race for their stances, Dr. Maureen Reed has been relatively shy about the issue — until now.
When the Minnesota Independent asked Reed’s campaign for a position on the abortion issue last fall, we never got a response. MinnPost’s Eric Black did, but Reed’s reply left the question open:
“The ideological terms, pro-choice, pro-life don’t begin to describe the complexity of this moral and medical issue,” said Reed. “It would be inaccurate to label me in either one of those ways. What would be accurate is to say I’m pro-health and pro-prevention.”
But this week, in a response to the Independent, Reed responded with an answer that puts her more firmly in the pro-choice camp.
“As a doctor, my position on this comes from years of taking care of patients,” Reed said through her spokesperson Trevor Willett. “I believe Roe v. Wade is the law of the land and it should stand.”
Reed also said that “preventing unintended pregnancies” was her highest priority on the issue and that government should stay out of a doctor-patient relationships.
“Abortion should be available to save the life and preserve the health of the mother, and the government should not be in the doctor’s office determining what ‘life’ and ‘health’ mean,” she said.
Reed’s statement straddles the records of both her opponents.
Clark is endorsed by EMILY’s List, which works to get pro-choice women elected, and in 2008 she got a 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota and a zero from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life. She’s on record as saying she wants to reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion.
“We can eliminate 90-95 percent of all abortions but then at the end of the day you want it to be rare, safe and legal,” told MinnPost’s Black.
It’d be harder to find anyone in Congress who is more opposed to abortion than Bachmann. She’s one of the top beneficiaries of the anti-abortion lobby in the House, and has sponsored or cosponsored more than a dozen anti-abortion bills in Congress. A third of the endorsements listed on by the Bachmann campaign are from anti-abortion groups including Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the National Right to Life PAC and Susan B. Anthony List.
She made headlines last fall for asserting that health care reform would mean teenage girls would have abortions at school during school hours with their parents none the wiser.
A slim majority of registered voters in the 6th Congressional district identify as pro-life, according to a SurveyUSA poll from 2008: 50 percent say they are pro-life and 47 percent say they are pro-choice, which is slightly higher than the statewide rate. Smart Politics notes that while the number of voters who say they are pro-life has been growing slightly over the years, the majority of Minnesotans identify as pro-choice.
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Comment posted January 28, 2010 @ 12:43 pm
While I think Maureen Reed would make a great Congress Woman. Comments like the one she made earlier would damn her campaign before it could ever get off the ground. The sixth district has proven that they’ll tolerate all kinds of crazy antics and insanity from their representatives, but they will not tolerate someone they think is an elitist, and condescending. Maureen Reed may very well be highly educated and the best candidate for the job, but the odds of her getting the elected against Michele Bachmann sadly I think are slim to none. She needs to step aside to let Tarryl Clark run if the dems have any chance of unseating Bachmann.
Comment posted January 29, 2010 @ 11:03 am
“Abortion should be available to save the life and preserve the health of the mother, and the government should not be in the doctor’s office determining what ‘life’ and ‘health’ mean,”
I wish I could vote for her.
All these “small gov”, “pro-Life” hypocrits really need to rethink their priorites. It’s either small gov staying out of the Dr. patient relationship or big gov interfering in that relationship. You can’t have it both ways!
Comment posted January 30, 2010 @ 11:21 am
Just saying that Roe v Wade should remain the law of the land and that “Abortion should be available to save the life and preserve the health of the mother and the government should not be in the doctor’s office determining what ‘life’ and ‘health’ mean” still leaves a lot of wiggle room, I’m afraid. What about if the life or health of the mother is not in danger? What about purely elective abortions? Where does she stand on the further chipping away of women’s reproductive health rights like the so-called “Women’s Right to Know” law? Parental notification laws? Abstinence-only programs? There are plenty more restrictive state abortion laws out there that also have survived the scrutiny of Roe v Wade. Where is Reed on those?
I’d was really hoping Reed had clarified her positions on this issue here, but it’s still about as clear as mud.
Comment posted February 24, 2010 @ 2:49 pm
Funny how the Reed campaign loves to massage the truth. Furthermore, I love how I have been getting repeated calls from the Reed campaign saying Clark’s record is a problem, and that she is from the most liberal area in the district:
1) I for one, an Independent, am very proud of the work Tarryl Clark has done for this area and the state of Minnesota as a whole! She has been working very hard at making sure we are well represented in St. Paul, and I am sure that will have no problem carrying over to Washington!
2) St. Cloud the most liberal area in the district?!? HA! That’s precisely why Al Franken only got 33% of the vote in Stearns County, yet in Washington county (where Reed lives) Franken got 37%!!
http://electionresults.sos.state.mn.us/20081104/ElecRslts.asp?CtyCd=82&M=CTY&Races=0103&CtyNm=Washington&ZoneName=&DID=
Furthermore, I would love to know how the Reed campaign intends on “securing,” all of these Independent voters when history shows she hasn’t been able to in the past!! In 2006 she took less than 6% in the 6th in her loosing effort for Lieutenant Governor (which by the way helped secure Pawlenty’s second victory by less than 1%; but that was somehow a “good,” decision for MN Maureen) while the Independent candidate, John Binkowski, got nearly 8%!!! Nearly 2% higher in your home district (Not to mention John had no money and no resources, unlike your campaign)!!! And in 2008, when El Tinklenberg ran ( a good friend), Bob Anderson took 10% of the vote doing absolutely nothing more than putting his name on the ballet (and El actually has held and position for the Independent party under Venturas administration)!! Yet Clark has proven not only that she can win an election (a weird concept I know), but she has done it by bringing together all parties: In 2006, in SD 15 Tarryl received over 56% of the vote and Tim Pawlenty recieved 55% – now let me break down what that means: TARRYL GOT VOTES FROM PEOPLE (republicans and independents) THAT VOTED FOR PAWLENTY!!! And that is just one example of how she has pulled votes from INDEPENDENTS, REPUBLICAN, and Democrats alike!!! And all of this evidence (and more) is freely accessible on the Secretary of State’s web-site; feel free to post if you are having trouble finding any of it and I will help you out.
In conclusion, coming from a life long Independent such as yourself, I beg you to to start running against Bachmann!! I have no problem with you being in this race, I am a firm believer in our democratic election process! But all this nonsense you are trying to build against Clark and for yourself is only going to hurt in the long run. These Karl Rove tactics of attacking Senator Clark’s strengths is the exact kind of partisan-hackery this district doesn’t want anymore!!! Tarryl has done a wonderful job talking and working with everyone in our area, and that’s one of the big reasons it has become so progressive. She should be proud of the fact that she gets such a high percent of the vote in an area that undoubtably helped put Pawlenty in office and helped give Norm Coleman nearly 10,000 more votes than Franken just in her senate district!! The people of this district are not stupid, and your antics are only going to come back to bite you in the ass!! You’re lucky Clark is too honorable to say these things about you. If she took on the same kind of hate tactics you did, your campaign would be dead in the water! But she is better than that, and so you should be too! We don’t need another finger-pointer in Washington; we need someone who has proven to get things done for the 6th district and Minnesota as a whole!
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