Author: Paul Deaton

Categories
Living in Society

Neglecting Public Health

Tobacco smoke. Photo by Jill Burrow on Pexels.com

I spent six years on my county’s board of health. It was the most substantial volunteer work I have done. We touched upon almost every aspect of the community and it felt like we were making a difference. Under Republican leadership the state’s public health system is getting worse.

Let’s talk about cancer. According to the Iowa Cancer Registry, an estimated 21,000 Iowans will be diagnosed with cancer in 2024. Iowa has the fastest-growing rate of new cancers and the second-highest rate of new cancers in the country, according to the report. Breast cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer make up 40.5 percent of new cancer diagnoses. Iowa deaths from cancer are trending down, yet at what point will increases in diagnosed cancers take the death rate another direction?

Is alcohol use about personal freedom or regulation? Iowa has the fourth highest rate of binge drinking in the country, which the Centers for Disease Control defines as five or more drinks on one occasion for men and four or more for women. When that is the case, public health should be stepping in. In part, that is why we study data. Alcohol is a leading cause of cancer, among other maladies.

Are decisions to use tobacco also personal? I suppose so, yet there are more than 345,000 Iowans who smoke cigarettes and our smoking rate remains above the national average of 12.9%. Tobacco use is also a leading cause of cancer.

What is the Republican-led state government doing about tobacco use? On April 18, the Iowa House passed HF2673 to eliminate the state’s longstanding Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Program. The law would place tobacco prevention under a larger agency along with programs related to gambling, substance abuse, and addiction disorders. After previously passing the Senate, Governor Reynolds is expected to sign the bill. The FY25 Health and Human Services state budget bill currently being considered also eliminates dedicated funding for the state’s tobacco prevention program.

Don’t get me started on pesticide use, air quality, and water pollution.

As a former member of the county board of health, I know a lot of activity is based upon how the state and federal governments set regulations and requirements. What is now happening is an unseen erosion of public health that will eventually take a noticeable toll. A good public health program is about prevention. Under Republican governance, prevention is not as important as it once was.

Here is a link to the Iowa Democratic Party to get involved today.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Garden Enchiladas

Enchiladas, Spanish rice, and sauteed corn and bell pepper.

It seems early for a kitchen garden post yet here we are. The combination of a mild winter and plentiful plantings last year brought a Saturday vegetable harvest. There were collards, kale, cilantro, and spring onions growing in last year’s planting areas. Volunteer garlic came up where I plan tomatoes this year. After harvest, I cleaned the produce and made dinner with it. We had enchiladas, Spanish rice, and corn sauteed with bell pepper. I also used preserved guajillo chili sauce from last year. My recipe for enchiladas is here.

This meal has a lot of steps yet is worth the effort. The point I make today is while I enjoy plate photos like the one above, the sought end result is fleeting creativity in the kitchen, set in time, as I use ingredients picked an hour or two before. It is of such fleeting essences our lives are made.

During my time I viewed many television cooking shows, and lately, short-form videos about cooking. Rarely does any one of them stand out. Some are formulaic, some a brief distraction. There were so many of them, all the recipes and processes began to look alike. I mean, we know the combination of onion, carrot and celery with bay leaves makes a delicious soup base. We should know the Louisiana “holy trinity” is onions, bell peppers, and celery. How many times do we need to hear it? I imagine most of us have heard it enough.

It is possible to be a creative person. Creativity has some end goal in mind, with cooking, perhaps a plate photo or making a memory of a specific meal. Yet it is the process for which we live. I would never have put collard greens in the filling of an enchilada, except that’s what I found in the garden that day. I found fresh cilantro and that unplanned addition characterized the dish. While I often have recipes in mind, they are little more than a suggestion when cooking. The best of what we eat is often the result of a process that had no recipe in mind at the beginning. At least, it can be.

Grocers have a problem with my kind of food creativity. A grocer in a big box store must stock thousands of items while waiting for some customer to come along seeking one. They rely upon an item’s popularity to cover overhead and make a profit. Popular as they are, I can’t imagine many circumstances when I would buy fresh cilantro or spring onions at the grocer, even though they stock them all year. Therein lies the difference between my kitchen garden and cooking. There is something magical about a kitchen garden that can’t be replaced by commodities from the grocer.

Enchiladas are a well-liked meal in the United States and elsewhere. Our small community has two Mexican restaurants that sell them. If I wanted a Mexican-style dinner, I could just buy take out. That would be missing the point of time in the kitchen garden.

Categories
Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-04-21

Photo by Jessica Lewis ud83eudd8b thepaintedsquare on Pexels.com

Garden vegetables overwintered: cilantro, spring onions, kale, collards, and garlic. The garlic grew where it was planted last year, so I will pull it before tomatoes go into that spot. Main crop of garlic is about 12 inches tall. The last order of tomato seeds, cucumbers and squash arrived via USPS on Saturday. The shift from indoors to outdoors work is evident this week.

Electricity Outage

On Tuesday a big storm rolled in and took the electricity out for a brief moment. It was enough to risk losing the edits I was making on my autobiography. Luckily, my computer saved my then current work in the browser and I was able to restore it, rename it, and proceed on. Losing a day’s edits is unwanted, but a writer can recover from that. Luckily, because of technology I don’t understand, I didn’t lose anything when electricity failed and the CPU and screen died.

Optometrist

This week I had my annual appointment with an optometrist for a diabetes screening. It is remarkable how many tests and the diversity of equipment they used for this exam. With a special camera, the attendant took a photo of my retinas. There was almost no change to note year-over-year. I’m clear for another as far as diabetes is concerned until the next appointment in 2025.

The optometrist has been mentioning cataract surgery as a future possibility for the last few years. The thing is, while I experience some vision deterioration, the amount of change does not affect everyday activities like reading and driving. If doc recommends it, I am going to delay until there is some kind of actual problem. The annual screening is fine.

He wrote a new eyeglasses prescription, which I will not fill because I like my current glasses and the improved vision they provide.

Robotic Approach to Health

I had a robo-call from my prescription drug insurance company. The machine left a message on my mobile device. When I called back, it was a robotic reminder I needed to fill my prescription, accompanied by warnings about following doctor’s orders. The pharmacy had some kind of robotic reminder system that previously prompted me to refill my prescription. The reason I didn’t refill was my nurse practitioner quit when the university bought the private hospital system. He hasn’t been replaced. When I called the temporary clinic the next town over to discuss, they asked me how many pills I had left. Because of the robot, I had plenty to last a couple of weeks. When I get down to five pills, I’ll phone so they can reauthorize.

In the meanwhile, I met with a group of pharmacy students who suggested an over the counter drug instead of what I was taking. I have been thinking of stopping the prescription drug and self-treating. Did the robots know, and hence their concern?

Mushroom Hunters

While walking on the state park trail I encountered some neighbors I’ve known a long time. They were off trail and I asked if they were looking for mushrooms. Spring Morel Mushrooms are a well-loved delicacy in this region. He answered that was what they were doing. I stopped walking and we talked. The drought is too much for the mushrooms to grow, we agreed. When I hit the turn-around point and returned, they were both gone.

Another Edit Pass

I see an opportunity to improve the draft of my autobiography. When I started, my main concern was getting a story framed on a timeline. Now that it’s done, I want to emphasize my development as a story-teller. I hadn’t envisioned that when I began. I made some changes to the first chapter and now need to follow it through to the end. It was like something nagged at me. Now I know what it was. With gardening season here, I’m not sure how the new edit will be worked into the schedule.

Categories
Living in Society

Immigration Iowa-Style

Photo by Matt Barnard on Pexels.com

In an effort to present a contrast with Joe Biden, Republicans insist upon elevating immigration as a top tier 2024 campaign issue. My issue with this is they lie, dissemble, and obstruct.

Are there are many “contacts” at the border. Yes. Is there a problem with illegal importation of the narcotic fentanyl? Yes. Are there 15 million undocumented persons inside the U.S. border right now? Probably yes. Why don’t politicians do something about this? Republicans decided that instead of legislating our country out of a potential problem, they would rather use immigration as one of three key issues to cudgel Joe Biden as president. (The other two are right to choose, and the economy).

On the April 5 edition of Iowa Press, Jeff Kaufmann was asked about abortion suppressing Republican voter turnout: “You know, I think it remains to be seen when you’ve got this overwhelming interest and these overwhelming numbers in terms of people’s disappointment on the border and with the economy. What is the bandwidth in terms — can you have three major issues? Can you have four? Is immigration going to overwhelm the issues debate? We’re ready for that debate.”

I don’t know anyone among my neighbors and friends for whom immigration is a significant issue. For Iowa Republicans, immigration is a top three issue.

Kaufmann explained the electoral calculus to Brianne Pfannenstiel of the Des Moines Register.

And quite frankly, Brianne, I’d like to say it’s all rallying around Donald Trump, but there’s also an element there too of if you have a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, even people that are not necessarily thrilled about the personality of Donald Trump, they’re going to vote for Donald Trump.

When the founders wrote the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, immigrants were on their collective mind. Many of the founders were immigrants themselves, and no one asked native populations whether white immigrants from Europe were legal or could take the land and physically remove them. When the British began importation of slaves to North America in 1619, few people considered this human chattel to be immigrants, let alone have standing with the government. In short, white colonists began protecting their stolen and domineering rights with the 1790 Naturalization Act, which required two years of residence in the country, “good moral character,” and that an applicant must be a “free white person.” The bias toward white naturalization continued until 1965 when Lyndon Johnson opened the country’s doors to immigration from other parts of the world.

Current immigration policy, Iowa-style, is a reaction to liberal policies dating back to LBJ.

Anyone paying attention can see what’s going on:

  • The governor sends Iowa National Guard Troops to Texas to help with border patrol.
  • Iowa members of Congress voted to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
  • Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst signed a petition to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring the impeachment to an immediate trial.
  • Senate Majority Leader immediately takes a vote and dismisses both articles of impeachment. The votes were 51-48 and 51-49, both along party lines.
  • Characterization of fentanyl addiction as a killer (by Miller-Meeks, et. al) when Iowa has one of the lowest drug overdose mortality rates in the nation.
  • Wanton use of the phrase “every state is a border state” when nothing could be further from the truth. If Iowa was a border state, there would be no reason to send troops to Texas.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. All the same, there are more important issues at stake in this election. The only way to overcome Republican hyperbole about the border is to elect Democrats.

Here is a link to the Iowa Democratic Party to get involved today.

Categories
Environment

How Are Things Going Before Earth Day?

Image of Earth 7-6-15 from DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory)

Earth Day is Monday, so how are we doing? Is the news media helping us create a better environment?

Bill McKibben follows issues centered around the climate crisis better than almost anyone. Here’s the stark truth from his substack, The Crucial Years:

At the most fundamental level, new figures last week showed that atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—reached new all-time highs last year. Here’s how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the figures:

While the rise in the three heat-trapping gases recorded in the air samples collected by NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) in 2023 was not quite as high as the record jumps observed in recent years, they were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade. 

The global surface concentration of CO2, averaged across all 12 months of 2023, was 419.3 parts per million (ppm), an increase of 2.8 ppm during the year. This was the 12th consecutive year CO2 increased by more than 2 ppm, extending the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases during the 65-year monitoring record. Three consecutive years of CO2  growth of 2 ppm or more had not been seen in NOAA’s monitoring records prior to 2014. Atmospheric CO2 is now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels.

Entirely unsurprisingly, the planet’s temperature has also continued to rise.

The Crucial Years, a substack by Bill McKibben, April 10, 2024.

Not long ago, McKibben headed an organization called 350.org, which advocated keeping average surface concentration of CO2 below 350 ppm. At 419.3 ppm, and increasing about 2 ppm per year, we are going the wrong direction.

How do news audiences perceive the climate crisis? A recent study explored this question. Why is it important? How we perceive and receive news about the climate crisis determines, in large part, whether and how we address it.

Around Earth Day, we expect to see more news stories about the climate crisis. Folks at Reuters Institute studied news use and attitudes about climate change, using data from Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA. The issues are similar to what we see in response to media on any topic: Should we trust scientists? What is misinformation and what isn’t? What news sources are trustworthy? Are direct action protests covered fairly by media? They found a lot:

  • In most of the eight countries there has been a slight increase in climate change news use, with just over half (55%) on average using climate change news in the previous week.
  • Climate news avoidance and trust in climate information from the news media have remained roughly stable, but avoidance has decreased slightly in the UK, USA, and Pakistan, as well as trust in the UK and Germany.
  • Scientists remain the most trusted sources of news and information about climate change, trusted by 73% on average, and respondents more often see them used as sources in the news media than any other source of information.
  • Over three quarters (80%) of survey respondents say they are concerned about climate change misinformation, consistent with data from 2022.
  • Once again, respondents think television and online (including social media and messaging apps) are where they see most climate-related misinformation. Politicians, political parties, and governments are frequently mentioned as sources of false and misleading information.
  • Nearly two thirds of respondents believe that news media play a significant role in influencing climate change decisions, actions by large businesses, government policies, and public attitudes, with particularly strong beliefs in Brazil, India, and Pakistan.
  • There is large variation in how soon respondents think people in their country will face the serious effects of climate change, with significant proportions in every country thinking the consequences are decades away at least. However, people who use climate change news on a weekly basis are considerably more likely to think that people are being affected by climate change now.
  • Significant disparities exist in perceptions of the impact of climate change on public health specifically, with those in Global South countries (Brazil, India, Pakistan) generally perceiving larger effects (50% or more) than those in the Global North (UK, USA, France, Germany, Japan).
  • Just over half of respondents think that climate change has a larger effect on poorer people (53%) and poorer countries (52%), but there is a considerable partisan disagreement on this in France, the UK, and the USA, with those leaning politically right less likely to agree.
  • People are more likely to think that richer countries and more polluting countries should take greater responsibility for reducing climate change, and weekly climate change news users are more likely to hold this view.
  • In the UK, USA, Germany and France opinion is roughly evenly split on whether direct action climate protests (e.g. blocking roads, disrupting sporting events) are covered fairly by the news media. But in Germany, the UK, and the USA opinion varies depending on whether people support or oppose the protests.
  • People in our survey expressed a high level of interest in various types of climate coverage, including news that discusses latest developments, positive news, and coverage presenting solutions. People did not express a clear preference for the type of solutions journalism they are most interested in.

What do these findings mean? Assessing news in media has become a critical skill in 2024. It is important to align our lives with accurate information about the climate crisis. Rich McKibben is a good source of information. So are Katharine Hayhoe and Al Gore. Knowing the truth about the climate crisis will make us better advocates. It will set us free to create a better world for our progeny.

On Earth Day 2024, we are a distance from achieving our goals. Things are not going as well as we need and it is complicated by reliance on media fraught with misinformation. We can do better.

~ The author helped organize the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 in his home town. He served as chair of the county board of health, and has been advocating and writing on environmental issues all along his journey. He joined Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project in 2013.

Categories
Living in Society

After the Storm

Green up in the state park, April 16, 2024.

During the first two minutes I had my Merlin bird identification software listening, it found: White-breasted Nuthatch, Northern Cardinal, American Robin, House Finch, House Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird, Blue Jay, Chipping Sparrow, and Canada Goose. The usual suspects were awake and came out to greet me a few days after the storm.

The storm gathered all the ash tree seed pods from the roof and collected them in the gutter downspout. That caused rainwater to overflow into the window well, and then leak into the house. It was a mess to clean up. There was no real damage, although the gutter design needs a remake to position the downspout elsewhere. Adding that to the long to-do list. It will go high on the list.

Clean up after the flooding will take some effort. Luckily we have the needed tools: buckets, rags, wet/dry vacuum, mops and brooms. Now to get those cleaned up, dried and put away.

Despite recent rainfall, and refilling of the lake, the newspaper reported this morning we continue to be in drought conditions in Big Grove Township. It continues to be too cold to plant much in the garden, with last frost as much as a month away. However, it is time to shift gears to doing more garden prep beginning now.

Where to start? Probably at pushing the post button and getting on with it. Make it a great day readers!

Categories
Home Life

Man in the Wind

On the state park trail in spring.

And there I was… standing with feet spread wide apart on the roof with wind wildly blowing my hair. It was a strong wind, with gusts likely to topple me without a broad base of support. From that vantage, I looked down at the lake and beyond, finished my work, then descended the ladder to safety. Septuagenarian men aren’t supposed to be walking around on the roof.

Beforehand, I woke my spouse to say I was getting the ladder to climb on the roof. We had previously agreed I wouldn’t be doing that any more. This time, there was no choice: the gutters were clogged and rain was expected in the afternoon. I checked the gutters after winter and they looked clear. Obviously, something changed before the major storm on Tuesday.

I am confident in my abilities and had the gutters cleared in no time. I inspected the roof while I was up there. It is in good shape for a few more years. As I walked the ladder around the house and into the garage, I said to myself, “What is wrong with me?”

I could have hired someone to check the gutters this spring. All the same, there are dozens of household tasks in queue and the net effect of too many of them is to delay. That is, until reality hits home and we must act.

I don’t know if I’ll get up on the roof again. I will avoid it if I can. At the same time, I like being universal man overlooking my domain in strong wind. It is not rational, yet there it is.

Categories
Living in Society

Absent a Moral Compass

Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

The wealthy and powerful made up their minds. They want a Republican President and Congress. Never mind their last Republican President went on trial yesterday. Never mind that corruption is endemic to what they do in the Congress. Never mind 45 failed to follow the most basic protocols regarding the security of national intelligence. They are lining up at the boarding station for the Trump train.

Heather Cox Richardson reported this as the triumph of politics over principle, citing an interview of New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu:

“Just to sum up,” Stephanopoulos said, “You support [Trump] for president even if he’s convicted in [the] classified documents [case]. You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he’s lying about the last election. You support him for president even if he’s convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”

Sununu answered: “Yeah. Me and 51% of America.”

Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson, April 14, 2024.

This is another iteration of the phenomenon I mentioned on April 13. Republicans plan to mention Joe Biden, then dissemble about the character of their chosen candidate, lying, and using disinformation and misinformation to advance him. Sununu was clearly lying when he said 51 percent of America would support 45 in the November election. It seems doubtful 51 percent of the electorate would do so.

How did we get to a place where the truth no longer matters in our politics? There has been conflict between faith and reason from time immemorial. How did we become such a rudderless society? How did Republicans lose self-awareness that their brand is one of corruption, criminality, greed, and grifting?

These are questions with a foothold in reality.

I understand we should distance ourselves from the noise and focus on doing what we can to elect Democrats in November. Let’s hope lack of a moral compass doesn’t spread within our cohort. If we do the work, morality and the truth will prevail. At least, that’s the hope.

Categories
Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-04-14

Pear blossoms.

Bluebells, dandelions, double ruffled daffodils, and pear blossoms are in bloom. Spring arrived this week. Then, in a decidedly summery move, ambient temperatures rose above 80 degrees on Sunday. It has been a mixed bag of weather this week, yet I appreciate the blooming flowers.

Eclipse experience

Monday, April 8, was the total solar eclipse in North America. At our latitude, the eclipse was at 82 percent. I made a pinhole projector like I used as a grader to see the shadow of the moon covering three fourths of the sun. It worked just as it did in the 1960s. I also tore up old ground cover from the garden in the diminished sunlight during peak eclipse. No special glasses, no trips to exotic Missouri locales. I had the full Iowa eclipse experience, home style. We know not to look directly at the sun around here.

Onion sets and potatoes

Onion sets arrived via USPS on Monday, April 8. I need to get them in the ground. I’m waiting for the right combination of warm temperatures, no rain and no indoors work to do. The pressure to get them planted is palpable. They are laid out in bundles on newspaper covering my workbench.

Yukon Gold potatoes are planted in containers. I need to round up more dirt to cover them as they grow. A layer of mulch on top would help hold down weeds.

It is also time to assemble the portable greenhouse. These are all signs of the garden’s progress.

Let’s kill energy efficient home appliances

My member of congress spoke to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which advanced H.R. 7637 The Refrigerator Freedom Act. She accused the Biden Administration of over reach. There was a tranche of related bills, including the “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act,” the “Liberty in Laundry Act,” the “Clothes Dryers Reliability Act,” the “Refrigerator Freedom Act,” the “Affordable Air Conditioning Act,” and the “Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act.” She asserted a form of logic that isn’t logic at all. It is an elected Congress doing the bidding of large-scale manufacturing firms. George Orwell couldn’t have written this script better.

The Pantry is Full

I skipped grocery shopping last week because the pantry is well-provisioned. Our main fresh foods are bananas, in season fruit, fluid milk, carrots, celery, onions and garlic. We had plenty to last until this coming week’s shopping trip. Our 2024 average weekly food and sundries spend is $111.47, so skipping a week of groceries helps with cash flow.

My spouse is helping family in the state capitol this week, so I made extra quarts of vegetable and bean soup to take on the trip. I used the last quarts of vegetable broth canned last year. This week, I plan to use some of the leafy green vegetables and celery from the freezer to make more. Using home made vegetable broth is a money saver.

Double Ruffled Daffodil, April 13, 2024.

I made good progress on my autobiography. As usual, it will be a rush of getting the garden in by Memorial Day. Maybe then, I can catch a breath.

Categories
Living in Society

How Abortion is a Campaign Issue

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

The topic of abortion exploded in our news media this week. It had a short fuse. Historian Heather Cox Richardson summarized two national news events in her April 9 Letter from an American:

Yesterday, former president Trump released a video celebrating state control over abortion; today, a judicial decision in Arizona illuminated just what such state control means. With the federal recognition of the constitutional right to abortion gone since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, old laws left on state books once again are becoming the law of the land.

Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson, April 9, 2024.

On Thursday, the Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding Senate File 359, which specified after cardiac activity can be detected in a fetus, at about six weeks, abortion is banned. The law was blocked by the high court. Now that Roe vs. Wade has been overturned, Governor Reynolds seeks to reinstate the law.

Midst the shrapnel of takes about these events, folks are missing something. Simply put, abortion is one of three primary issues Republicans intend to leverage against President Joe Biden to strengthen their weak case for support in the electorate. The other two are the southern border and the economy. None of these will gain traction without accompanying Republican lies, distortion, and disinformation.

While a majority of Americans support a woman’s reproductive rights, including access to abortion, in the street fight that will be the 2024 political campaigns in Iowa, and across the country, a peculiar take on abortion will be a campaign issue. Trump did a poor job of articulating it during his video this week, but managed to squeeze it in, saying some favor abortion “up to and even beyond nine months.” Good grief! The Democratic position since Dobbs has been to codify the protections of Roe vs. Wade. There is no such thing as abortion beyond birth in Roe, or anywhere else. It is a lie for 45 to suggest there is.

I don’t agree with Iowa Republican Party Chair Jeff Kaufmann’s view, but he did a better job of articulating their tactics to use abortion as a campaign issue. Kaufmann was asked by Kay Henderson, moderator of Iowa Press:

Let’s shift to the general election and one of the major issues that will be presented. And your party’s nominee, Donald Trump, has said some states have gone too far in the post-Dobbs era. Is that going to be something that depresses turnout and votes for Republicans in Iowa in November?

Iowa Press, Iowa Public Television, April 5, 2024.

At the end of a somewhat rambling answer, Kaufmann got to abortion and said,

My guess is if you’ve got an independent voter that is somewhere in the middle of this particular issue and they’re going to have to move one way or the other and if abortion is that main issue, my guess they’re going to see abortion all the way to the point of birth, which you can’t get a major Democrat even in Iowa to say that they are against, versus a heartbeat bill, I will put my money on the fact that they’re going to go with a heartbeat bill and they’re going to go with the Republican position any time over abortion on demand up to the point of birth.

Iowa Press, Iowa Public Television, April 5, 2024.

There is no such thing as “abortion on demand up to the point of birth.” What Democrats seek to do is codify the protections for women that were found in Roe vs. Wade. Kaufmann is spreading disinformation.

“Democrats believe everyone deserves the right to make their own healthcare decisions,” according to the Iowa House Democrats April 8 newsletter. “Especially when it comes to reproductive care and abortion.” Government should have no role in a discussion between a pregnant woman and her doctor. None.

The difference is in tactics. Republicans can’t win the election if they tell the truth and they know it. Democrats who focus on polling which shows a majority of Iowans favor the right to an abortion, or who advance positive issues related to reproductive health care, aren’t wrong. What would be wrong is a failure to confront the lies, disinformation, and misinformation presented by Republicans to win over the electorate in the run up to the November election. I would like to see Iowa Democrats be more aggressive in fighting Republican lies regarding abortion or any issue. With the right encouragement from voters, I am confident they will.

Here is a link to the Iowa Democratic Party to get involved today.