Minnesota shootings: Targeting lawmakers, abortion activists isn’t what I’d call pro-life

Something fueled the gunman’s actions, and the evidence points here.

The Minnesota Star Tribune
June 19, 2025 at 11:00AM
The community has been leaving items at the Brooklyn Park home of Melissa and Mark Hortman as a memorial to them after their murder on Saturday. (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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I would say that I find Vance Boelter’s alleged involvement and targeting of abortion rights politicians and supporters as ironic (avenging the pro-life movement by paying with life itself), but that would insinuate that both the lives of state Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, and her husband were on par with that of an nonautonomous organism. Let me be clear: They weren’t.

Hortman was a person who lived and experienced life, faced challenges and made difficult decisions as speaker and then speaker emerita of the Minnesota House. She was a living, breathing person who also supported abortion access in Minnesota, voting to establish abortion rights under state law in 2023.

Boelter has been charged in the Hortmans’ deaths, and also in the shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman, DFL-Champlin, and his wife, who both survived. Documents found in Boelter’s car contained the names of abortion providers and abortion-rights activists, as well as legislators who publicly support abortion access like U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith. The list consisted mostly of members of the Democratic Party who, as we know, made abortion one of their central messages in our most recent presidential election.

It has not yet been specified what the assassin’s motive or motives were, since the case is only just now starting to circulate through the courts, but the list found in Boelter’s car insinuates that an antipathy for abortion and abortion supporters fueled his apparent actions.

This carefully crafted event by the shooter (including costume and set changes) is an atrocity not only because of the four people subjected to abhorrent, cold-blooded political killing fixations, but because a group so intent on removing people’s freedoms influenced a man to attempt and succeed in taking away real people’s lives.

Abortion rights advocates want to make sure that people who become pregnant have options, are aware of them, and know how to obtain them. Those who oppose abortion are solely focused on taking away the option and villainizing people and leaders who support abortion access.

Whatever your views on abortion may be, there is no abortion procedure anywhere comparable with the killings and shootings on Saturday.

Hortman’s memory won’t be forgotten, and the past weekend has infinitely cast another George-Floyd-sized shadow on Minnesota’s political reputation. But this didn’t have to be the case. Hortman could’ve continued to be a force in the Minnesota House, and could’ve continued making the difficult decisions that leaders make and lived out her political career. Now we won’t know how her life would have played out, since she was taken from the Earth presumably because of her view on one topical matter.

Caroline Siebels-Lindquist, who’ll be a senior this fall at Drake University, is a summer intern for Minnesota Star Tribune Opinion.

about the writer

about the writer

Caroline Siebels-Lindquist

Intern

Caroline Siebels-Lindquist is the intern in the Opinion-Editorial department for the Minnesota Star Tribune.

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