Governor Reynolds, Republicans Need to Answer New Questions

Now that they've destroyed health care privacy, autonomy for women in Iowa

The six-week abortion ban enacted last week by Iowa’s Republican legislature, signed by Iowa’s Republican Governor, and cheered by Iowa’s Republicans in Congress is an example of fascism, arrogance, and misogyny on parade.

It’s a public declaration that author Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead, in her novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” will be the guide for state governance in Iowa rather than any dusty, quaint, old ideas about freedom and the basic rights outlined in the Constitution.

The abomination enacted into law last week means all Iowans need to start asking Republican Reynolds and Republican lawmakers some new kinds of questions most of us never dreamed would be necessary, before the car-wreck of law making took place in Des Moines last week.

Republicans need to answer those questions, too, uncomfortable as the conversations may become.

For example, here are a few: Governor Kim Reynolds - Have you ever had an abortion? Have you ever been in a situation where you worried that you might need an abortion?

How about you, Senator Joni Ernst? Or Iowa Congresswomen Mariannette Miller-Meeks or Ashley Hinson? Same questions.

By the way, were any of you sexually active before you married? What were your plans in the event that you discovered you were pregnant?

Ever have an actual pregnancy scare in those days? Did you consider abortion at that point? How did you make your final decision, whether to have one or not have one?

Same question for every Republican woman member of the Iowa Legislature who jumped on the bus to Gilead in order to vote for that now infamous six-week abortion ban.

Have any of you - in Des Moines, or in Washington, DC - ever had a medical condition that meant your own likely death or infertility if you couldn’t get timely reproductive medical care, including an abortion?

Or an untimely pregnancy for which you at least considered abortion? Or maybe even had one? What were the circumstances? What did you do?

I don’t mean to make this a sexist line of questions only for the women.

We ought to be asking plenty of new questions of the Republican men who voted for, or applauded last week’s assault on the right of Iowa women to make their own health care decisions, too.

Senator Chuck Grassley, Congressmen Zach Nunn, and Randy Fenstra - When you were dating, did any of your girlfriends ever find themselves “in trouble? How did you and she deal with that crisis? What options did you and your girlfriend consider? Was abortion ever one? How was the decision - whatever it was - reached?

What did you learn from that experience?

Let’s widen the line of inquiry even more: Any close family members ever need or consider an abortion as part of their - or their partner’s - reproductive health care? What did they decide? How did they decide? How about your siblings? Aunts and Uncles? Cousins? Friends? What experience have you had with any of these matters, personal or even at a distance?

I acknowledge that some readers, at this point, are probably ready to pop a gasket.

Why would I suggest asking such intimate, private, “nobody’s business” questions of elected public officials? Have I no sense of decency? The very idea! These are not topics polite people talk about in public. The answers to these questions are most emphatically nobody else’s business!

I get that.

Up until last week, I would have agreed 100% with that view.

But things changed last week.

Iowa’s Republican Governor and the Republican state legislature decided that intimate reproductive health and sex matters and histories of other people are things we talk about. At least they do. All the time it seems.

In fact, they are not content to just talk about these once forbidden topics when they concern other people, and to do so in public forums, they have taken it upon themselves to go further and make decisions for every woman and girl in Iowa about these most intimate and private matters.

If you want to pop a gasket about something, I would respectfully direct your attention to that fact.

Keep in mind these are Republican politicians whose party generally takes the position that government can’t do anything right. Ever.

Yet their position now, on this issue, is that if your life, your daughter’s life, your wife’s life, your mother’s life, your sister’s or aunt’s life, or your cousin’s or friend’s life depends on their access to health care that includes abortion, government cannot ever get it wrong. The decision has already been made and that decision fits their ideology and partisan political needs, if not your loved one’s health care needs, like a glove.

You have probably noticed that campaign flyers and TV ads every election year are always packed with the personal histories and credentials the office seeker thinks qualifies them to make the decisions they’ll be asked to make if elected. Clearly, they believe that sort of background, personal history, and credentialing is essential on issues.

Ag issues? The flyer says the candidate grew up on a farm.

Budget issues? The flyer helpfully notes the candidate once served as the treasure for a community club.

Small business issues? TV ad shows them talking to the owner of the local hardware.

Abortion? Crickets.

We have very little of personal history - information about their experience - on this issue from politicians who have taken to themselves the power to dictate a women’s most intimate and private health care decisions.

We have a right to know. Is there anything in the personal background of an office holder who voted for, supported - or signed - the six week abortion ban that prepared them, even remotely, to address these issues? Do they have any experience with any of these issues or difficult circumstances and choices?

If so what was their experience? What did they do? How did they make their decisions? How did it prepare them - if they think it did - to make decisions for everybody else on reproductive health care?

We have virtually no information on any of that from those who rushed last week in the state capitol to appoint themselves the “deciders” for every Iowa woman’s health care.

So we need to start asking them.

We can - and we must - get the power back that they grabbed for themselves last week and return it to where it belongs - to the women of Iowa. We can do that at the next election, and the work to accomplish that needs to start now. Today. Yesterday, in fact.

In the meantime, we need to get some answers. We need to question those who took this power, closely. If it makes them feel uncomfortable to be asked about such private matters, sorry. (Not sorry.) It’s a good bet the 1,564,081 women in Iowa are also uncomfortable about learning they are no longer allowed to make their own health care decisions, even when their own life is at risk.

Iowa’s Republican lawmakers grabbed unprecedented power. They used that power in an unprecedented way - to take constitutional rights away from Iowa women and girls whose lives often depend on their ability to exercise those constitutional rights.

Under the circumstances, it is not only OK to start asking Republican elected officials unprecedented questions about what has prepared them to make such decisions but it is imperative that we do.

Barry Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains is a weekly column that is part of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative. The Collaborative links some of Iowa’s best thinkers and writers directly with readers to help fill the gap left as many of Iowa’s traditional newspapers cut back on opinion, analysis and even reporting on a wide range of topics. Please review the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative columns listed below and consider subscribing - either for free or with a paid subscription - to help ensure that readers continue to have access to informed and thoughtful opinion, analysis, commentary, and reporting. Your subscriptions, especially paid subscriptions, are what makes this effort work and allow these columns to be available.

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