Tim Walz signed abortion through all nine months of pregnancy into Minnesota law in 2023.
Outside Minneapolis, a baby boy arrived at 24 weeks weighing just a pound and a half.
Nurses fought for him for 334 days, and one of them has a plea for everyone who hears his story.
Premature Baby Adonis Fought MRSA and Pneumonia Before His First Birthday
Adonis was born in October 2025 at North Memorial Health, 24 weeks and five days into his mother's pregnancy.
He weighed 1 pound, 8 ounces.
His parents, Jasmin Wellington and Junior Rancy-Quaye of Maple Grove, watched him spend months on a breathing tube.
He battled MRSA – a staph infection that shrugs off common antibiotics – and pneumonia on top of it.
Nurse Katherine Martinson remembers the nights.
"I remember going home and coming back, and I'm like, 'I hope and pray that he's still here,'" she said.
He always was.
"He was a fighter since the very beginning," Martinson said.
His mother carried the weight of every one of those nights.
"Definitely a lot of anxiety in the beginning when he had more critical care," Wellington said.
"I really don't know how I even survived."
His father leaned on his faith.
"Put your trust in God," Rancy-Quaye said.
"That's the only recipe we got."
Miracle Baby Adonis Went Home After the Longest NICU Stay in North Memorial History
In September 2026, Adonis left the hospital after 334 days – the longest neonatal intensive care stay North Memorial has ever recorded.
He spent almost his entire first year of life inside that unit.
The baby who weighed less than 2 pounds went home at more than 20 pounds.
He still needs oxygen, but his lungs keep getting stronger.
"It's a miracle that he's going home," Martinson said.
His mother put it even more simply.
"He's definitely meant to be here."
Pro-lifers an ocean away cheered too.
"His strength to make it through such prolonged difficulties is a testament to the strength of so many premature children," said Catherine Robinson of Right To Life UK.
Martinson noted that plenty of babies born this early leave her unit for bigger hospitals that can place a tracheostomy or feeding tube.
She wants people to stop writing them off.
"Give babies a chance when they're born that early; a lot of people don't realize they can exceed expectations, even when they're born that early," she said.
Adonis isn't even the youngest baby to beat the odds.
Curtis Means was born in Alabama in July 2020 at just 21 weeks and one day, weighing 14.8 ounces, according to Guinness World Records.
"Survival at this gestational age has never happened before," said Dr. Colm Travers, a University of Alabama at Birmingham neonatologist.
His doctors put his odds of survival at less than 1 percent.
He made it.
And survival this early is no longer a long shot.
At 23 weeks – a full week younger than Adonis – 55 percent of premature babies who get active NICU care now survive, up from 16 percent between 1998 and 2003, according to a 2024 study in Pediatrics highlighted by the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
Every day Adonis spent in that unit was a choice to treat him as a patient worth saving.
Minnesota law doesn't make that choice.
Minnesota's Late-Term Abortion Law Lets Abortionists End the Same Babies Nurses Save
Walz signed the PRO Act in January 2023 after Democrats pushed it through 69-65 in the House and 34-33 in a party-line Senate vote.
It set no limit on how far into pregnancy an abortion can happen, and no requirement for a reason.
That means a baby at 24 weeks and five days – Adonis's exact age at birth – has no protection from abortion in Minnesota.
The law's indifference doesn't stop at birth.
In 2021, the Minnesota Department of Health reported five babies born alive after abortion attempts.
None of them survived.
Some got "comfort care," and some got nothing at all.
Then in 2023, Walz signed changes that erased the requirement to take "all reasonable measures" to save those babies and replaced it with a vague call for "care."
The state stopped counting them, too.
Republican state Rep. Krista Knudsen and 21 co-authors tried to restore those protections in 2025, and the bill failed on the House floor.
Adonis is home in Maple Grove because a team of nurses decided a 24-week baby was worth 334 days of fighting.
Under Tim Walz's law, that same baby could have been aborted the day before he was born.
Martinson's plea is the whole pro-life case in four words – give babies a chance.
Adonis is living proof she's right.
Sources:
- Steven Ertelt, "Baby Born at 24 Weeks Heads Home After Longest NICU Stay in Hospital History," LifeNews, September 25, 2026.
- "World's most premature baby defies sub-1% survival odds to break record," Guinness World Records, November 2021.
- Daniel Payne, "Did Tim Walz allow abortion for any reason up to birth? Here's what the law he signed says," EWTN News, October 7, 2024.
- Mary Margaret Olohan, "Under Gov. Tim Walz, Babies Born Alive in Botched Abortions Were Left to Die. Then He Removed Reporting Requirements," The Daily Signal, August 6, 2024.
- Joe Ruff, "Minnesota Senate passes bill guaranteeing right to abortion; governor expected to sign into law," The Catholic Spirit, January 27, 2023.
- Charlotte Lozier Institute, "Saving Extremely Premature Babies," Charlotte Lozier Institute, August 10, 2026.
- Minnesota Family Council, "Restoring the Right to Life-Saving Care for Infants Born Alive (HF24/SF461)," Minnesota Family Council, 2025.
