For more than 100 minutes on Thursday, Democrats and Republicans in the Minnesota House of Representatives engaged in a heated floor debate over whether to restore a state-funded grant program for pregnancy resource centers.
But the DFL House caucus’ top-ranking legislator, Melissa Hortman, wasn’t one of those to speak up on the bill, HF25, that has advanced in the chamber over the last month.
Hortman and 65 other Democrats ultimately sank the bill on Thursday evening, when it failed by one vote to gain the 68 votes it needed to pass. All 67 Republican House members voted for the bill.
An 11th-term Democrat from Brooklyn Park, Hortman is one of the longest-tenured members of the House. She is one of a handful of current legislators who voted “yes” on a bill in 2005 that created the “Positive Alternatives Grant Program,” which provided state-funded grant opportunities to pregnancy resource centers. Then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the bill into law after it passed in the House by a vote of 112-17 and in the Senate by a vote of 53-11.
Well more than half of the Democrats in the House and Senate at the time supported the bill—including Hortman and another current legislator, Rep. Tina Liebling of Rochester.
For the next 17 years the grant program was available to pregnancy resource centers across the state. That changed in 2023 when the DFL-controlled House and Senate inserted a provision in a health finance omnibus bill that eliminated the program. Gov. Tim Walz signed that legislation into law just a few days later.
But for the last month, as the GOP has held a one-seat majority in the House, Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar, R-Fredenberg Township, has been pushing a stand-alone bill to restore the “Positive Alternatives Grant Program,” to the tune of $4 million annually that would be available to the 90-some pregnancy resource centers and maternity homes across the state.
“For 17 years, before I came here, maybe before some of you came here, but we do have members that were here, on both sides of the aisle, when this was a bipartisan discussion,” Zeleznikar said. “And I think it’s important we return to that same spirit of bipartisanship, because that’s really what Minnesotans want.”
