Senator Janne Myrdal Contact information

Janne Myrdal, born on May 4, 1962, is a Republican member of the North Dakota Senate, representing the 19th district. She was first elected in 2016 to the 10th district, and re-elected in 2020.

Born in Skien, Telemark, Norway, Myrdal lived there until completing high school. She then decided to travel to Texas for a year to do humanitarian work as a Christian to help refugees. There she met Mark, an American farmer from North Dakota, who she married in Skien, Norway in 1994. They have three children who they raised on the family farm in rural Edinburg where Myrdal is a homemaker.

Before becoming a member of the North Dakota Senate, Myrdal was an anti-abortion activist, heading the anti-abortion group ND Choose Life. Additionally, Myrdal is the former director of the North Dakota chapter of Concerned Women for America, a conservative activist group which opposes LGBTQ rights.

In January 2017, Myrdal co-sponsored House Bill 1185, which would have classified all internet-connected devices as “pornographic vending machines” that must make unavailable any “obscene material and obscene performances” unless the end user of such a device requests an opt-out in writing and pays the state a $20 opt-out fee. Facing international ridicule, the cosponsors dropped the bill from further consideration.

Also in January 2017, Myrdal re-shared an article on her personal Facebook page that criticized LGBT opposition to then-president-elect Donald Trump. The accompanying image featured a rainbow flag that had been defaced with a swastika. Upon claiming to learn about the image, Myrdal immediately deleted the post and apologized for what she claimed was a mistake.

In January 2019, Myrdal cosponsored a bill to require physicians to tell women the falsehood that it is possible to reverse a drug-induced abortion. Myrdal said the bill was about providing options to pregnant women, but the head of the state’s sole abortion clinic said the claim was not backed by science. The bill did become law, but was blocked by a federal judge on the grounds that it required doctors to lie to their patients.