When I campaigned for office I said I would work for: Pro-life legislation
What we did:
Prenatal Development Education: Requires grades 5-12 in schools to be taught in sex ed. or health class human biology related to pregnancy and human development inside the womb. It would be using a high-definition, ultrasound video showing the process of every stage of human development inside the uterus from conception to birth. This will be a wonderful tool to educate youth on the reality and beauty of what is actually happening inside the womb during pregnancy. Youth will know that this is not a “clump of cells” but an actual baby is being formed, which it is hoped would engender a sense of wonder, respect, and awe at the miracle of human life.
What we still have left to do: We worked so hard to get the heartbeat bill and it has helped save lives here in Iowa but in the last few years we have learned that about 63% of abortions being committed are done with pills purchased online and delivered through the mail. The Obama and Biden administrations greatly relaxed the regulations on these abortion pills, even allowing federal law, which prohibits the mailing of these pills, to be broken. A new report reveals that 1 in 10 women suffer complications following administration of chemical abortion pills. This is an unacceptably dangerous level for the woman, and obviously her baby. The Trump administration is being urged to tighten up these regulations, but we need to also do so on the state level. This includes requiring abortion providers to inform women of the possibility of being able to reverse the abortion procedure and how to do that.
When I campaigned for office I said I would work for: Protecting religious liberty, 2nd Amendment, and all our constitutional rights and liberties, including private property rights
What we did:
Sex and Gender Clarity: Removes gender identity from being a protected class under Iowa civil rights law. Removes the legal basis for a person asserting they are the opposite sex. Protects women and children in bathrooms and changing areas, females in sports, and taxpayers from funding sex change treatments in Medicaid. Defines sex, gender, woman, man, mother, and father.
Private Property Rights: Protects private property rights of landowners against the carbon capture pipeline. Requires a project to have a public use and to meet the definition of commodity and common carrier in order to use the power of eminent domain. The company must have adequate insurance to cover all losses or damages and prohibits a CO2 pipeline company from renewing its permit after 25 years.
Right to Try Upgrade: Expands Iowa’s “Right to Try” Act to include “individualized investigational treatment”. Also allows a patient that has a life-threatening or severely debilitating illness, as confirmed by a doctor, to participate in the program.
Vaccine Exemption Disclosure: Requires K-12 schools and child care centers, colleges, and universities to communicate with parents and students the exemptions to students’ vaccine requirements.
Anti-SLAPP: Creates an anti-SLAPP law for Iowa. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. This bill is designed to provide early dismissal of meritless lawsuits filed against people for their exercise of 1st Amendment rights, like freedom of speech and of the press, the right to assemble and petition, and the right of association. SLAPP lawsuits are generally used to intimidate or suppress people from speaking out on matters of public concern. Usually anti-SLAPP laws have applied to journalists investigating government corruption and reporting on it.
Obscene Material to a Minor: Raises the penalties on dissemination of obscene material to a minor.
Doxing a Crime: Makes “doxing” a crime of harassment. This is disseminating someone’s personal information without their consent with the intent to threaten, intimidate, annoy or alarm them.
Human Trafficking: Changes definitions to afford better protections for victims and to better facilitate the arrest and prosecution of predators.
Constitutional Amendment: Proposed constitutional amendment to protect children and any witness with a mental illness, or intellectual or developmental disability from confrontation by an accused person who was their abuser in court. Currently in our constitution the right of the accused to confront witnesses is not limited and with certain persons it needs to be. This came from the Attorney General’s office. Iowa is the only state that currently does not have this protection.
Voters’ U.S. Citizenship: Allows the Secretary of State (SOS) to verify the U.S. citizenship status of both registered voters and those who will register to vote. In conjunction with changes made at the federal level, the SOS will be able to use federal databases to help determine if someone is a citizen or not.
Ranked Choice Voting: Prohibits ranked choice voting in Iowa. Ranked Choice Voting is a system where, rather than just voting for one candidate, voters must vote for (i.e., rank) all candidates to ensure that their ballots are counted and not trashed. This means a voter would be voting for candidates with whom he fundamentally disagrees. When no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round of tabulation, some voters’ ballots must be trashed to force a majority. Requires machines to administer.
Election Recount Reform: Addresses the confusion and lack of uniformity that occurred in the 2nd Congressional District when Marianette Miller-Meeks won over Rita Hart by 6 votes in the 2020 November election.
Minimum Age for Firearms: Changes the minimum age to possess and carry firearms to 18 (from 21).
Drones: Creates a criminal charge for flying a drone within 400 feet from farm animals, farm equipment, and farm structures without prior consent. The criminal charge is enhanced if the drone is equipped with a surveillance device that can record images, sounds, the species of farm animals, and the type and use of farm equipment and structures.
Foster Parent Custodial Rights: Allows foster parents to provide emergency and routine medical care and participate in an Individualized Education Program (IEP) for a foster child in their care. When the biological parent is not present or unable to be reached the foster parent does not need to be delayed in order to provide timely and critical care for their foster children. Notice must be provided to the biological parent.
Fuel Freedom: Prohibits a state, city, county, school or other government from restricting the use of engine-driven equipment based on the kind of fuel used by the engine. In other words, the state or its subdivisions cannot “discriminate” against certain kinds of fuels.
Hands-Free: Prohibits the use of electronic devices, usually cell phones, while driving except in the voice-activated or hands-free mode.
What we still have left to do: Plenty! The longer we go, the more is needed to protect life, liberty, property, and constitutional rights!
- 1st Amendment: We need to protect the 1st Amendment religious freedom right of health care providers to refuse to participate in medical procedures that violate their religious beliefs, such as abortion, sex-change treatments, etc. Also, foster and adoptive parents should not be forced to embrace LGBT ideology that conflicts with their religious beliefs or moral convictions. That should include protections for mental health counselors to exercise their 1st Amendment religious freedom and free speech rights to help LGBT counselees who want to live according to their faith teachings on sexual ethics and practice.
- Medical Freedom: Our 4th Amendment right to medical freedom still needs to be strengthened. We need to protect the rights of people to refuse to take an EUA product (like a COVID shot) from discrimination by employers, businesses, health care facilities, and nursing homes who would deny them employment, service, treatment, and visitation. Parental consent needs to be required for the HPV vaccine just as it is for all vaccines. Medical boards should be prohibited from disciplining doctors and pharmacists should not be threatened for prescribing drugs off-label for COVID, such as ivermectin. And more.
- Election Integrity: More needs to be done to shore up election integrity-better maintenance of our voter rolls, ID’s for absentee ballot voters, ballot security markings, and transitioning to hand counting or non-internet capable “counting” machines. Iowa is good but Iowa has some loopholes. This should be a no-brainer.
- Pornography: We need to address the issue of pornography as it is totally pervasive now in society, especially on the internet, destroying children, marriages, and families and feeding human trafficking, virtually unhindered. To protect children and assist parents, we need to require internet-capable devices to have their filters turned on when purchased. We also need an age-verification law to enter sexually explicit sites. Public libraries should not be spending taxpayer resources on sexually explicit materials just as we have prohibited it in schools. In addition, we should prohibit minors from viewing obscene programs and performances, both live and in-person. All of this is still not done.
- Bathrooms: We need to extend the same safety and privacy protections to women and children in public restrooms that we have set in place for school restrooms: use only by persons of the same biological sex.
- Disaster Emergency Law Reform: Disaster emergency law needs to be updated to include greater protections for the rights of citizens, families, businesses, and churches during a public disaster emergency. Still not done.
- Sexual Abuse Victims: We need to extend protection for sexual abuse survivors that we did in the Boy Scout case from last year. We should remove the statute of limitations entirely for all sexual abuse victims so that those victims would not be cut off from being able to file a claim. It is well known that it normally takes longer than 4 years (current law) from the time a sexually abused child-that-becomes-an-adult discovers an injury and decides to file a claim.
Conclusion: I was happy with the productive session we had where a number of important things were accomplished! I appreciate all the input and support I received from so many of you that made these accomplishments possible! Thank you so much! As you can see there is much more that still must be done and we will be back next session to work on those things.
There are many other concerns that I worked on that are important but for lack of space I did not cover those. Please feel free to contact me if I did not cover something of concern to you.
You always do good work! Thank you