Here is Part 2 of the 2026 legislative session accomplishments:
Pro-Life
When I campaigned for office I said I would work for: Pro-life legislation
What we did:
Chemical Abortion Pill: Requires abortion medication to be prescribed and administered in person by medical professionals licensed to do so and it must be dispensed to the woman who will take it, not a third party. Also requires written informed consent including information about the risks of the drugs and how to access medical care. Outlines a pathway for the woman to bring civil litigation against the provider of the drugs. The intent is to limit the potential availability of mail-order medications like mifepristone and misoprostol, coming from out-of-state sources (all this activity is already illegal according to federal law), as studies have shown that almost 1 out of 10 women report an adverse event after taking them.
MOMS Funding: Continues grant funding for the More Options for Maternal Support (MOMS) program to pregnancy resource centers throughout the state, which support healthy pregnancies and childbirth instead of abortion.
Pregnant Minor Consent: Allows a minor to consent to prenatal care, labor & delivery or postnatal care if a parent is not reasonably available to consent. It is still required to obtain informed consent from the minor patient before providing such care. This is designed to ensure the safety and health of a minor as well as care when the minor is pregnant or having a baby or care for the baby, in the case when the minor’s parents are not reasonably available.
What we still have left to do: We obviously need a life-at-conception law to ensure that all preborn babies and their mothers are protected in our state. The chemical abortion bill may be a deterrent to out-of-state bad actors seeking to distribute these dangerous drugs to female victims in our state, but this will require monitoring to determine the extent of its effectiveness. We need to continue to support pregnancy resource centers so that mothers in a crisis pregnancy have a supportive place to which to go.
Constitutional Rights
When I campaigned for office I said I would work for: Protecting religious liberty, 2nd Amendment, private property rights, and all our constitutional rights and liberties
What we did:
Conscience Protections for Health Care Providers: Recognizes and protects the freedom of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and hospitals to decline to participate in medical treatments that violate their religious beliefs or moral convictions, such as abortion, sterilization or castration or removal of healthy body parts (so-called gender-affirming care).
Conscience Protections for Foster & Adoptive Parents & Agencies: Recognizes and protects the freedom of foster parents and adoptive parents to decline to support or refrain from embracing any government policy regarding sexual orientation or gender identity that conflicts with the parents’ religious beliefs or moral convictions. The state cannot use a person’s sincerely held religious beliefs regarding sexual orientation or gender identity, including how they intend to guide, instruct, or raise a child, as justification to deny eligibility to foster or adopt. Also protects faith-based foster care and adoption placement agencies from operating their services in violation of their religious and moral beliefs. The state is required to allow faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to carry out their operations in accordance with their religious and moral beliefs.
Affirmative Action: Repeals affirmative action programs and references in Iowa law (previous name for DEI).
Gender Identity: Local governments may not have the category of “gender identity” as a protected class as it is not a protected category in the state.
Disaster Emergency Reform: Reforms the governor’s disaster emergency powers. Provisions apply during a disaster emergency. It prohibits the governor from closing, placing a mandate on, or otherwise regulating a church or place of worship. It also says that election law cannot be changed without a vote of the legislature. And it prohibits vaccine mandates by the governor.
Parental Consent: Parental consent is now required in order for a minor to receive the HPV vaccine, just as it is for all vaccines.
Ballot Issues: Foreign entities are prohibited from being involved in campaigns for ballot issues.
Traffic Cameras: Establishes regulations for automatic license plate readers so that the data collected is only used for purposes that are specified in the bill and is not allowed to be accessed for unauthorized purposes.
Restoration of Land: Establishes requirements for the restoration of land after construction of large electric transmission facilities. Requires: repair of damaged drainage tile; removal of foreign rocks; tilling of crop land to 18 inches deep; restoration of damaged soil conservation practices and structures, and grading; restoration of prior vegetation, reseeding of hay and CRP ground; removal of field entrances and temporary roads; use of good utility practices for constructing in wet conditions, with grading and tilling to original condition.
Hydrogen: Regulates exploration and production of underground hydrogen. Updates current law which has little to no protection for farmers and landowners. Protects the rights of farmers and landowners in pooling, site entrance by the company, income and royalties, out-of-pocket costs, and land restoration. No eminent domain is allowed.
Verification of U.S. Citizenship: Requires verification of U.S. citizenship for employment in schools, Regents universities, state agencies, and counties, for voting, for driving, for receiving welfare benefits, such as SNAP, Medicaid, FIP and CHIP. English proficiency required to get a CDL.
Habitual Offenders: A habitual offender is one who has committed 3 felonies. Increases the current minimum sentence for a habitual offender from 3 to 7 years. Increases the current maximum sentence for a habitual offender to no more than 20 years. Habitual offenders will receive no deferred or suspended sentences. Probation officers are now required to report probation violations to the appropriate authorities.
Human Trafficking: Minors that are arrested or that are victims of child abuse shall undergo a human trafficking screening. Minors will have 5 years after turning 18 to file civil litigation in human trafficking cases. Prosecutors can refer underage prostitution suspects to juvenile services rather than charge them with a crime. HHS is to develop a plan for expanding services for minor victims of human trafficking. An applicant for a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) must complete a course on human trafficking prevention.
Age Verification: Updates our current laws regarding a minor’s access to pornography to reflect current technology. It requires a company on the internet that distributes pornography to have an individual use an age verification system (18 and older) in order to access the pornography. Minors are to be denied access.
American Laws for American Courts: Protects citizens against courts applying foreign laws when it will violate constitutional rights. It makes unenforceable any court decision that bases its ruling on any legal system that would not recognize the rights of that person under our Constitution. Courts have at times cited foreign law as a support for their ruling. Courts are not subject to foreign laws but only to the laws and constitutions of the state and of the United States.
Animal Torture: Animal torture perpetrated on companion animals is defined very specifically and the penalty is increased to a felony.
MAHA: Requires SNAP recipients purchase only healthy foods approved by the USDA in the SNAP program, meaning no soda and no candy. Requires doctors to take continuing medical education on nutrition and metabolic health.
Cancer Prevention: New single-family and 2-family homes are required to include a passive method for radon mitigation. $3 million is appropriated to the University of Iowa for pediatric cancer research.
Water Quality: Re-allocated funding for wastewater and drinking water treatment infrastructure, conservation practices, and water quality monitoring to shift it to the most urgent needs and most effective programs.
What we still have left to do: Much is left to do! Good things have been done but more is needed to protect life, liberty, property, and constitutional rights!
- Eminent Domain: After much work on this issue this past session trying to get a compromise with Senate leaders with a ban on the use of eminent domain for CO2 pipelines included, we still could not get agreement for that. So farmers and landowners still need those protections to be put into place.
- 1st Amendment: We still need 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 still need protections for employees, customers, clients, and students against discrimination by employers, businesses, governments, and schools over whether a person has taken a vaccine or other medical treatment. We also 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.
- 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.
- Pornography: We need to keep children from being able to access pornography through research platforms used in schools and libraries. To protect children and assist parents, we also need to require internet-capable devices to have their filters turned on when purchased. Public libraries should not be spending taxpayer resources on sexually explicit materials just as we have prohibited those in schools. In addition, we should prohibit minors from viewing obscene programs and performances, both live and in-person. We’ve gotten a good start on this issue, but more still needs to be 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: The disaster emergency law we passed this session needs to be made more robust to include greater protections for the rights of citizens, families, and businesses during a public disaster emergency.
- Human Trafficking: More manpower and funding need to be dedicated to combating this crime.
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.
