Maggee Hangge Testifies on the Senate Health and Human Services Omnibus Bill

Madame Chair and members of the committee:

My name is Maggee Hangge, policy associate for the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy voice of the Catholic Church in Minnesota. I am here today to share our hope that you will use this bill to advance real care for vulnerable populations that helps not harms.

Minnesota’s Catholic Bishops have consistently supported principled health care reform derived from our core values: respect for the dignity of every human person; concern for the poor and vulnerable; and advancing the common good. Like any basic element of life, health care is necessary for development, sustains us, and should be accessible and affordable for everyone. Abortion, which takes a human life, is not healthcare, nor are gender treatments that alter the bodies of children based on unproven science.

Funding abortion and gender treatments with tax dollars compound bad policy by coercing the people of Minnesota into paying for elective procedures that cause irreversible damage. Fortunately, and wisely, these provisions are not included in the DE amendment to SF2995. As this bill moves into conference committee, we urge you to keep these provisions out, as they are currently in the House version.

Doing so allows for more money to be available for real healthcare, including the MinnesotaCare for the undocumented. We are grateful that you included this vital resource for children in SF49, but we ask that you expand it to adults, as well. This is an area on which we have advocated in the past and will continue to do so, so long as the vital program does not open up to fund elective abortions and gender treatments.

More globally, we can help ensure that more people can take advantage of the first healthcare clinic—the family—and pass earned sick and safe time legislation.  To do so, we need to ensure first that the funding is present so that important program does not overly burden our disability and long-term care providers.  Doing so supports the healthcare needs of our most vulnerable populations.

We have a choice to use limited resources to advance real healthcare for vulnerable populations or advance ideological causes that harm, not help.  Please choose wisely and fund real healthcare needs and keep abortion and gender medicine out of the final omnibus bill.

Thank you.