Here is Part 2 of the 2023 legislative session accomplishments (read part one here):
Pro-Life
When I campaigned for office I said I would work for: Pro-life legislation
What we did:
MOMS Bill: We have allocated $1.4 million for the More Options for Maternal Support (MOMS) program. This will offer state grant funds to non-profit organizations that support healthy pregnancies and childbirth instead of abortion. These are the many pregnancy resource centers in our state.
What we still have left to do: We are anxiously awaiting an Iowa Supreme Court ruling expected in June. We are hopeful the court will lift the injunction against the Heartbeat Law and allow it to go into effect. We also hope the court will establish the same guidelines as the U.S. Supreme Court did last year and allow states to protect unborn children. This will guide us in future legislation.
Constitutional Rights
When I campaigned for office I said I would work for: expanding 2nd Amendment rights and protecting religious liberty and our constitutional rights
What we did:
Parental Rights:
- If the student requests to be addressed by a different name or pronoun due to their intent to change gender identity, the parent must be notified.
- Requires that school districts must receive prior written consent from a parent before conducting a formal examination or survey of a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health.
- Parents must also give written consent to opt their child into a survey or evaluation that reveals information, such as political and religious affiliations and sexual behavior.
- The bill states that parents and guardians bear the ultimate responsibility and have the constitutionally protected right to make decisions affecting their minor child.
Protecting Youth from Sex Change Treatments: Prohibits sex change treatments for minors. Sex change treatment and/or surgery is mostly permanent and irreversible. There may be partial recovery of a person’s original state, but certainly no total recovery of their original state. What we are talking about here is the chemical castration, sterilization, and sometimes mutilation of emotionally distressed children. A minor is too young to make such a life changing decision.
Election Bill: Removes Iowa from ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center) – an organization Iowa joined in 2018 to help clean up voter rolls but it was doing a sloppy job for the money Iowa paid in as dues. Also requires that precinct caucus participants must be physically present at the caucus meeting to participate.
What we still have left to do: Plenty!
- We still need to more fully protect our 1st Amendment religious freedom right to live and work according to our faith without fear of being punished by the government.
- We should do what we can at the state level to protect citizens’ 1st Amendment free speech rights on social media as well as protect children from harm and damage inflicted on them by social media.
- We have more work to do to recover 2nd Amendment rights and hopefully finish that up next session.
- Our 5th Amendment private property rights remain at risk with the possibility the Iowa Utilities Board may allow private companies to seize farmland in the form of easements to use for a carbon capture pipeline. This is not for public use, but for private use and economic development which are not appropriate for the use of eminent domain power. Even though many efforts were made, it was a big disappointment to me that we did not get these protections put into place this past session.
- More needs to be done to shore up election integrity-better maintenance of our voter rolls to include encouraging citizens who are helping clean up voter rolls, steering us back to in-person voting with absentee balloting only allowed under special circumstances, ballot security markings, and transitioning to hand counting or non-internet capable “counting” machines.
- Our 4th Amendment right to medical freedom still needs to be strengthened and not enough has been done on this issue. The ban on COVID vaccine passports needs to be extended to employers so employees are protected from having to show proof of a COVID shot, as well as to nursing homes, hospitals, and doctor’s offices so visitors can see their loved ones and patients can get treatment. Medical boards should be prohibited from disciplining doctors and pharmacists should not be threatened for prescribing drugs off-label for COVID, such as ivermectin.
- Emergency law needs to be updated to include greater protections for the rights of citizens, families, businesses, and churches during a public disaster emergency.
- 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. In addition, we should adopt an “anti-grooming” law which prohibits minors viewing sexually explicit and pornographic materials, programs, and performances, both live and in-person.
- ESG – We did not get finished the bill requiring managers of public funds such as IPERS to consider only financial factors when making investment decisions (as has always been) and not ESG ratings. ESG stands for environmental, social, governance. Large corporate directors and business investors, with input from the federal government, designate these scores based on how well the person or small business or company adheres to a number of policies, such as “green” climate change-inspired policies, opposition to the use of fossil fuels, opposition to production agriculture, opposition to gun manufacture, beliefs about racial equity including anti-racism, white privilege, etc., support for abortion on demand, and LGBT ideology. It has started to become a trend in some places to deny loans or investment capital if a company’s ESG score is not high enough, meaning the company does not adhere strongly enough to these policies. This bill would prohibit these ESG scores from being used in decisions regarding investments of our public funds. In addition, financial institutions and their customers need protection from ESG score from being imposed on them.
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 know 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.
