JEERS ... to Sen. Cindy Carlson, R-Riggins, and Rep. Mike Kingsley, R-Lewiston.
Idaho has some of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the country — so much so that physicians are anxious about treating miscarriages and troubled pregnancies. The uncertainty is a strong incentive for physicians to either leave the state or avoid coming to Idaho altogether.
In response, the Idaho Medical Association this year persuaded lawmakers to give health care providers and hospitals some clarity about ectopic pregnancies and other complications.
Now, Carlson, Kingsley and another 10 Idaho Freedom Caucus members want to harass those hospitals.
Their letter starts with a prevarication: “During this last legislative session, Ken McClure, representing the Idaho Medical Association, informed legislators that the current criminal abortion policy needs changes since he claims health care providers must perform more abortions than Idaho law currently allows.”
McClure said no such thing.
This bill — a compromise worked out between the IMA and Idaho Chooses Life, an anti-abortion rights group — was about making the law more precise, not performing more abortions.
Having misrepresented McClure’s motives, Carlson, Kingsley and the Freedom Caucus then ask:
“Has your hospital performed any of the induced abortions that are required to be reported? If so, has your hospital been in compliance with Idaho’s induced abortion reporting law? If not, is there a reasonable explanation, and will you please provide your induced abortion data so we can make informed policy decisions?”
These lawmakers either know better — or should.
So what are they after? Do they intend to second-guess a physician’s treatment of an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage? Are they encouraging doctors to withhold health care — or even leave the state? Are they discouraging women from seeking medical attention when they’re undergoing a miscarriage for fear that the Idaho Freedom Caucus will expose them?
And what qualifies them to do so?
Kingsley is a semi-retired businessman.
Carlson is a business owner.
The dozen lawmakers listed on the letter are home builders, business owners, engineers and biologists. Not one claims any health care expertise.
Theirs is a dangerous political stunt that will further undermine the already precarious quality of reproductive health care available to Idaho women.
CHEERS ... to the half-dozen Idaho university faculty members who are challenging the constitutionality of Idaho’s notorious academic gag law.
For more than two years, the No Public Funds for Abortion Act has been terrorizing college campuses with its toxic cocktail of fuzzy directives and extreme penalties.
For instance, it precludes public employees from promoting or counseling in favor of abortions. (As the lawsuit points out, however, there is no such prohibition against “academic speech that opposes or counsels against abortion.”)
Get it wrong and the faculty member could face a one-year jail term and a $1,000 fine — or even a felony conviction, 14 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Topping it off are getting fired, a ban from future state employment and being charged restitution.
As a result, Lewis-Clark State College earlier this year sanitized issues dealing with abortion from its “Unconditional Care” exhibit at the Center for Arts & History.
Acting on the abundance of caution urged by the University of Idaho’s general counsel, faculty responsible for teaching the next generation of Idahoans in fields such as history, literature, political science, sociology, journalism and social work have engaged in self-censorship.
That’s a blatant assault on the First Amendment right of free expression and academic freedom. And such vague language invites guess work on the part of faculty members as well as arbitrary enforcement on the part of prosecutors — a direct violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
This legislative mischief demands judicial review. But given the Idaho Legislature’s reputation for vindictiveness against academic independence, you can understand the relative dearth of protests on Idaho’s campuses.
That is, until these six came forward and put the issue in front of a federal judge:
-- Aleta Quinn, an associate professor of philosophy at UI.
-- Casey Johnson, an associate professor of philosophy at UI.
-- Markie McBrayer, an assistant professor of political science at UI.
-- Zachary Turpin, an assistant professor of American literature at UI.
-- Kathryn Blevins, an associate professor of journalism and mass media as well as co-director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at UI.
-- Heather Witt, an associate professor of social work and coordinator of the Bachelor of Social Work Program at Boise State University.
Their fight is your fight.
Without them, a group of radical legislators in Boise will be free to dictate what is taught in the classroom and what is not.
JEERS ... to Idaho Republican Party Chairperson Dorothy Moon.
Moon says the prosecution of former President Donald Trump is a deliberate distraction from the Hunter Biden morass.
Hasn’t she got that backward? Hunter Biden traded on his family name — although there is zero evidence implicating his father, President Joe Biden.
But Hunter Biden never held public office. He never possessed confidential documents illegally. He’s not been indicted on charges that he tried to subvert the will of the voters in the 2020 presidential election.
Then Moon veers from whataboutism to fallacy: “And we’ve all seen the video of Joe Biden admitting, in his own words, that he strong-armed a foreign government to fire the prosecutor that was investigating Hunter Biden and his company.”
No, we did not.
What we saw was Biden discussing his role as Barack Obama’s vice president in seeking the ouster of Ukranian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
But Shokin was not investigating Hunter Biden or his role in the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
“Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma. And Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation,” Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Washington Post in 2019.
How gullible does Moon think you are? — M.T.
