‘Abominable,’ 'Unacceptable': Rep. Phillips Slams Roe V. Wade Reversal

MINNESOTA — Minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down abortion rights protected by Roe v. Wade for the past five decades, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips called the court’s ruling “abominable” and urged Americans to “mobilize, energize and organize.”

“Elections have consequences, none more upsetting than today’s,” Phillips tweeted. “Withdrawing a woman’s right — one established a half century ago — to make decisions about her body and her future is abominable.”

“Mobilize, energize, and organize. We need you this November. All of you,” Phillips tweeted Friday morning from his personal account.

RELATED: Roe V. Wade Overturned: What It Means In Minnesota

The congressman for Minnesota’s Third District also shared a message Friday from his official Twitter account.

“Unprecedented. Unacceptable. SCOTUS has rescinded a right afforded to women for over a half-century, a blow to all who believe in limited government encroachment in our personal lives,” Phillips said. “Patients, not politicians, should reserve the right to make decisions about their own bodies.”

The court's ruling to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and a subsequent case on fetal liability — Planned Parenthood v. Casey — was expected. Justice Samuel Alito Jr.'s majority opinion draft was leaked in May to Politico, signaling a seismic shift in abortion rights was coming.

Read the full Supreme Court decision here.

At least 26 states are certain or likely to make it nearly impossible for a woman to get a procedure that was legal for her mother, grandmother or even great-grandmother, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research and policy group.

With the decision, abortion will be illegal or a nearly impossible procedure to get in about half of U.S. states, including large swaths of the South, Midwest and Northern Plains.

RELATED: Roe V. Wade Overturned: Abortion Rights Left To States To Decide

The state of Minnesota has the most liberal abortion laws in the region. Under Minnesota law, abortions are allowed during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Abortion is already illegal or will be illegal soon in 13 states with pre-existing abortion-banning "trigger" laws, which are set to take effect with the dismantling of Roe and Casey.

Another four states are poised to ban abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nine have so-called fetal-heartbeat laws that make the procedure illegal before many women know they are pregnant.

Planned Parenthood Minnesota Advocate — the action fund for the organization's work in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota — said it will hold a vigil at 5:30 p.m. Friday in Minneapolis to "grieve and process this monumental reversal of our rights and what this will mean."

"Every person deserves the fundamental right to control their own body," Planned Parenthood Minnesota Advocate wrote on Facebook. "We must march, mobilize, organize, text, call, write, shout — do everything we possibly can to show support for safe, legal abortion."

RELATED: Protesters Gather After Supreme Court Strikes Down Roe V. Wade

Planned Parenthood's Woodbury clinic is reminding anyone who calls that "no matter what you're hearing, abortion is still legal in our region."

"Planned Parenthood's doors are open. We are providing abortion care and all other services," the clinic's website says.

Planned Parenthood locations in Wisconsin were forced to temporarily suspend all abortion services due to Friday's Supreme Court ruling, according to Tanya Atkinson, president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin.

"Today, our daughters have less rights than their mothers, less rights than their grandmothers. This is absolutely unconscionable," Atkinson said.

Planned Parenthood's Wisconsin clinics are still working to serve people seeking abortions, Atkinson said.

Wisconsin clinics "can help people navigate to a state where abortion remains safe and legal, where people's healthcare decisions are respected," Atkinson said.

Clinics can also provide aftercare to people who are returning home to Wisconsin after receiving an abortion, Atkinson said.

State Senate DFL leader Melisa Lopez Franzen, of Edina, called the Supreme Court’s ruling a “radical attack” on reproductive freedom and “an attack on the fundamental rights of people in Minnesota and across the country.”

“Let's be clear: abortion is healthcare, and that remains true for Minnesotans even after this radical decision,” Lopez Franzen said in a statement. “Minnesotans deserve the right to make decisions about their own bodies guided by the medical advice of their doctors, not by the decisions of politicians.”

The Senate minority leader said the DFL party fought last month to “safeguard and strengthen access to reproductive health care” and blamed Republicans for blocking those measures.

“We will continue fighting for this fundamental right,” Lopez Franzen said. “Minnesota has been a national leader in reproductive freedom, and we must continue to lead today by protecting fundamental rights. We must not and will not go back.”

Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, who represents the Twin Cities east metro, called Friday’s ruling from the Supreme Court “a direct attack on women” and said it “overturns a fundamental right to make our own health care choices.”

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig called the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade a “calamitous decision that upends decades of precedent and rolls back fundamental rights for millions of Americans.”

Craig, who represents Minnesota’s Second District, warned Friday’s ruling “is just the beginning of government overreach into the private, personal decisions of American families.”

"The federal government has no place interfering in the decisions between a woman and her doctor, criminalizing abortion or enacting arbitrary laws that undermine women's reproductive freedoms,” Craig said.