In May 2018, our House 2B representative Steve Green voted with others to authorize HF 4522, a bill that “would reduce funding to the University of Minnesota for operations and maintenance by five percent if the university uses a fellowship to train doctors in abortion procedures.” This bill, along with a similar Senate bill (SF 4097), failed to become law.
Why would our representative wish to restrict funding to our University Medical Center for this reason? Presumably because he opposes abortions and wants to do all in his power to make abortions difficult by preventing obstetrician/gynecologists from knowing how to both do abortions and to deal with complications of abortions.
Doctors need to be trained to deal with abortion and its complications – hemorrhage, infection and scarring even if they don’t choose to perform them. Reducing funding to the U of M to forbid doctors to be trained in abortion issues would be similar, for instance, to forbidding doctors to be trained in how to deal with smoking-related diseases because you believe smoking is terrible.
Medical training should be done by doctors, not by politicians.
Our taxes pay Mr. Green’s salary. Perhaps he could better spend his time, and our money, working on issues pertinent for our House District 2B — reducing poverty, developing clean energy jobs, improving access to health care, making sure education is first rate, improving internet access — rather than legislating what medical education should be about.
