Women’s health, justice reform dominate Tuesday statehouse candidates forum

Editor’s note: The following is part one of a two-part story covering Tuesday’s League of Woman Voters of Jasper County Candidate Forum. Wednesday’s part will detail answers from Iowa Statehouse candidates, and Thursday will feature the candidates for Jasper County Board of Supervisors.

Candidates vying for seats in the Iowa Senate, House and the Jasper County Board of Supervisors were given a chance Tuesday night to assert their principles, address voter concerns and answer attendee questions during the annual League of Women Voters Candidate Forum at Newton City Hall.

Gathered behind a large, half-circle table inside the council chambers, political hopefuls were given a few minutes to introduce themselves to voters before the question-and-answer session began. Organized by the League of Women Voters of Jasper County and sponsored by the Newton Daily News, moderators accepted questions submitted by the audience and allowed each candidate roughly two minutes to wrap up their thoughts.

The night would be split into two parts: statewide and local elected office. Of the six total state candidates expected to attend the Tuesday evening forum, only one person was a no-show — Jon Thorup, R-Knoxville, leaving opponent Ann Fields, D-Knoxville, as the sole candidate representing the race for Iowa House District 28.

State Rep. Wes Breckenridge, D-Newton, was paired alongside Ann Howell, R-Colfax, as candidates for the Iowa House District 29 seat, as were Iowa Senate District 15 opponents Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Bondurant, and Dan Nieland, D-Altoona.

Both the statewide and local candidates’ discussions were broadcast live from Newton City Hall on public access television, Mediacom cable channel 85.

Gov. Reynolds on over-the-counter birth control

Midway through the night, the forum moderator referenced a remark made by Gov. Kim Reynolds during a recent gubernatorial debate with Democratic opponent Fred Hubbell in Sioux City in which the Republican announced she would support over-the-counter birth control at pharmacies. The bill was voted down in the Iowa Senate in 2016, split in a party-line vote with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed. Candidates were asked if they would support the Senate Democrats’ bill in 2019.

Nieland was unaware of Reynolds’ announcement. “I’m surprised that the governor actually supported that idea,” he said. Nieland said he would support the measure.

“I know the argument is it promotes promiscuity, whatever the case may be,” Nieland said. “I can’t remember who I was talking to at one of the other forums… ‘Don’t let one mistake turn into two.’ In other words, if you’re too young to have sex, you shouldn’t be doing it anyway. But if you do, don’t turn it into two — in other words, now we have a child we have to put in the mix.”

In general, Nieland added, he would be supportive of over-the-counter contraceptives in pharmacies.

Nunn said family planning is a topic that should be on the forefront of everyone’s minds, and what he liked about Reynolds’ plan, an over-the-counter option “for families to acquire or for women to acquire affordable birth control.”

However, Nunn said there are caveat’s to Reynolds’ plan. Women receiving birth control, he said, would be required to see a physician once every two years and use prescriptions safely. If a bill were to be passed, Nunn recommended doctors oversight. Like Nieland, he is supportive of an over-the-counter bill coming forward, because he said it would be a good way to help rural Iowa “where there may not be a physician in town” but there is access to a pharmacist.

Fields stressed the importance of the bill for the state of Iowa. She claimed the bill came about because Planned Parenthood funding was cut off. Supporting Planned Parenthood, Fields said there is a lot more to the organization than contraceptives.

“For young women, there’s a lot more to their sexual health than contraceptives,” Fields said. “There are STD screenings — and it’s on the rise; STDs are on the rise right now — there are cervical cancer screenings, and many times these screenings are not done by their local physicians. Seventy-eight percent of women 21 and older got their birth control through planned parenthood.”

Fields referenced a report stating services for family planning “declined by 73 percent this year because (some) Planned Parenthood were closed.” Fields then advocated for the reopening of Planned Parenthood centers, which she said was the “number one place young people went to get their birth control.” Young women especially, she added, need access to more than just birth control. Fields said having over-the-counter contraceptives is a half measure; a full measure would be opening up Planned Parenthood centers again.

Breckenridge agreed with Nunn that oversight from doctors and nurses would be a crucial part in moving such a bill forward. He echoed much of Fields’ claims about family planning services and funding being cut off from the state. His concern is providing those services “to individuals that need those.”

Howell, who mentioned she is pro life, encouraged emboldening women and their health but said she will not fund Planned Parenthood.

“I continue to wholeheartedly value family,” she said.

Legislature’s role in women’s healthcare

Acting as a followup question to the aforementioned topic, candidates were asked what role legislature should play in women’s healthcare. Few directly answered the question.

Nunn said it plays “a very powerful role” in providing accessibility to the population, especially rural Iowans. He noted that healthcare needs to be affordable, referencing bills passed in the statehouse to better provide accessible care to for people who need to have those resources given to them. At the same time, Nunn is concerned the state tries to insert itself into the decisions and choices of individuals.

Fields said the state is making the decisions for women “through these pro-life choices.” Redirecting her sights back to Planned Parenthood, she said defunding the organization does not influence abortion and has only taken services away from people who needed them and had very few choices to begin with — again, mentioning rural Iowa. She said Planned Parenthood has a place in Iowa’s health system for both women and men.

Mentioning her nine-year tenure as a member of the Family Planning Council of Iowa and her experience dispersing Title X funds, Fields claimed “not one penny goes for abortion” and has been falsely told to the people of Iowa.

“There is not a role for the legislature in women’s healthcare,” Fields said. “It should be between a woman and her doctor, and that’s it.”

Fields received a round of applause from a supporters in the audience while some shook their heads and gave a thumbs down in protest. The crowd — which had been advised to hold its applause until the end of the forum — was then warned by a moderator to hold their applause.

Breckenridge said, as a male legislator, “that decision is between the woman and their doctor and their family.” Changing his focus to Medicaid, Breckenridge said one of the things he looks at is how many providers in the state have dropped out. Twenty or more have stopped taking Medicaid patients, he said.

“It’s more than just the Medicaid patients themselves,” Breckenridge said. “It’s you. You go to those providers every day. Skiff right over here? If we wouldn’t have had Skiff 23 years ago this December, my wife and my daughter would not be here today … She went into birth, had a ruptured placenta and as soon as we went in there, 14 minutes later, the baby was born. If we would have had to drive to Des Moines or someplace else, they both would have died. So when you say it doesn’t impact you with the Medicaid, it does. Because if this provider shuts down, it’s going to cost lives.”

Howell said efforts to assist all Iowans’ insurance policies are not working. Her concerns are the financial costs. Bills need to be paid, she said, and they need to be efficient and proactive.

Nieland said government and elected officials should do no harm.

“If we look at a couple things that everybody has mentioned — defunding of Planned Parenthood and the broken system Medicaid has become — there are people that are actually being harmed,” Nieland said.

Criminal justice system reform

Candidates were asked what they would do to correct the current criminal justice system, which the moderator described is destroying a lot of people and entertained reforming the system altogether. As someone with 27 years of law enforcement experience, Breckenridge said he would support criminal justice reform. He said it is a constant process modifying and updating the laws and looking at things that “may need to be decriminalized.”

“When you think about individuals that are struggling with something — whether it be addiction, alcohol, drugs, things like that — so often we focus and work toward the criminalization of that. We need to be focusing on the treatment,” Breckenridge said. “Part of that reform, part of the things we need to look to is how do we break that cycle?”

Breckenridge’s solution is an emphasis on treatment. Years ago, he said, funding for treatment used to be provided within the correctional facilities, but low staff numbers cannot guarantee those kinds of rehabilitated services. Breckenridge said treatment needs to be issued up front.

Howell prefaced her answer by referencing a mental health forum which took place Monday night at Newton DMACC.

“We had a great debate last night in regards to mental health and the treatment and the services that (are) so needed for those individuals,” Howell said. “The important thing when it comes to the criminal justice system is we can’t mend and mold all those together. The criminal justice system is there for a reason. We have laws for a civilized society.”

Howell said law enforcement agencies and treatment providers should be separated.

“We’re not going to modify our law enforcement and our laws for our society for individual situations,” she said. “I have the compassion for mental health and addiction — and those are being addressed and those are being taken care of in each individual situation are addressed — however, as a whole, we cannot modify those laws to keep a civilized society.”

Nieland said he took issue with Howell’s “one size fits all” approach. He mentioned his experience teaching financial literacy to ex-offenders about four years ago, many of which Nieland said were struggling with addiction, most commonly opioids. Nieland also brought up a tour he took of the Iowa Correctional Facility for Women in Mitchellville, in which he spoke to women serving time. He remembered a young woman told him she had been incarcerated five times.

“I said, ‘What kind of treatment are you getting when you’re incarcerated? and she said, ‘Pretty much just say no is what they’re telling us,’” Nieland recalled. “… I was so embarrassed to be an Iowan at that point. We’re not taking care of people that need to be taken care of … Nothing against law enforcement, but let’s look at what we can do to attack the problem cheaply and ahead of time.”

For the last two years, Nunn worked on the Judiciary Committee and he said reforming the criminal justice system in the state of Iowa was one of the top issues they drove forward. Nunn also addressed a comment Nieland made previously.

“With respect, I’m never embarrassed to be an Iowan, because I’m very proud of what we’re doing particularly in this area,” Nunn said. “I agree with Rep. Breckenridge and Ann (Howell) when it comes to the idea of identifying what we can do through sentencing reform … A number of folks in jail are first-time, non-violent offenders that have a drug addiction. As opposed to sentencing them to a $10,000 a year prison sentence, let’s get them back into their community.”

Nunn advocated to get non-violent offenders into a program with a drug rehabilitation sponsor and out of the prison where they could develop bad habits.

“The five-dollar-a-day rehabilitation program that we helped pioneer at the statehouse that we passed into law, now signed, is assisting more and more of those first-time, non-violent offenders to get back into their lives — to be a good dad, to be a good mom, to be involved in their community,” Nunn said. “…The other aspect of this is we get less people who are involved in the criminal system. As opposed to saying, ‘Let’s hire more correctional officers,’ well let’s identify who really needs to be in long-term institutional care in this state.”

Referencing Nunn’s previous statement regarding the amount it costs to keep an offender in prison, Fields said a wiser investment would be to hire one social worker to keep track of five people and their recovery outside of prison. Though she did disagree with Nunn about putting addicts or non-violent offenders back into the communities.

“If you’ve worked with alcoholics and drug offenders, that’s the No. 1 thing — you don’t want to put them back into the community where they came from because they fall into their old habits,” Fields said. “… Put them in a different community. Get them jobs. Get them training. And I think this is more important for them so they start to establish that self-esteem, they start to learn how to say no, they start to pay their taxes.”

Fields said there are too many people in prison right now, and drew attention to institutional racism.

“I think that this is a big thing,” she said. “You think, well, it’s not here in Iowa. Well, it is if you take a look at our rates … It’s hard to say that we have a problem, but we do.”

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext. 6560 or cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com