A crisis pregnancy center in St. Paul and a national anti-abortion organization are part of a group that has filed a federal lawsuit to overturn Minnesota laws protecting abortion rights.

In 2023, Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers and Gov. Tim Walz passed laws to support state protections against abortion after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade a year before.

The laws included a measure codifying into law the 1995 state Supreme Court decision Doe v. Gomez, which guaranteed abortion rights in Minnesota. They also removed restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period, the parental disclosure requirement and legal vestiges of a ban on late-pregnancy abortions — which had long been struck down by a court.

In a lawsuit filed last week in Minnesota District Court, the Women’s Life Care Center, the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates and others argue that Minnesota’s abortion protections violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to the US Constitution because “it is not medical treatment.”

They argue that the laws violate “the intrinsic right of expectant mothers to maintain their constitutionally protected relationship with their children, their right to procreate, their interests in the lives and welfare of their children.”

Furthermore, they claim that mothers who have abortions do not receive informed consent. The lawsuit names state officials as well as the regional organization Planned Parenthood and the Red River Women’s Clinic in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Asked by a reporter about the lawsuit at an unrelated news conference Monday, Attorney General Keith Ellison said he didn’t have much to share other than he didn’t think it was likely to prevail.

“We have read the complaint and will respond to it in accordance with federal and state law,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a very meritorious process.”

In addition to Women’s Life Care Center, Minot, ND, crisis pregnancy center Dakota Hope Clinic and mothers who have had abortions in Minnesota signed the lawsuit. Crisis pregnancy centers are organizations that provide health care services, such as ultrasounds, to pregnant women, but urge against abortions.

The 14th Amendment appeared increasingly in the arguments of anti-abortion advocates in the years following the end of Roe v. Wade. Although these arguments often centered around fetal personhood, legal scholars such as Mary Ziegler of the University of California-Davis observed.

In 2023, a letter published in the conservative National Review magazine, signed by leaders of numerous self-described pro-life organizations, called on the anti-abortion movement to view the issue of unborn rights through the lens of the postwar 14th Amendment Civil.

And this year, the Republican Party adapted its platform to frame the issue of abortion in terms of equal protection under the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and that states are allowed to enact laws protecting those rights.