22May 2017 by Lynda Waddington
Iowa winnowing of health care begins

Iowa winnowing of health care begins

Gazette Column
News that health care advocates had been dreading came Thursday: Planned Parenthood of the Heartland will shutter a third of it’s Iowa clinics. Locations in Bettendorf, Sioux City, Burlington and Keokuk will close at the end of June. Only one of those locations offered abortion services, and it will continue to provide those procedures until the building is sold. Soon to be lost is what more than 70 percent of Iowans supported — access to family planning services like contraceptives, prenatal vitamins and cancer or other disease screenings. More than 14,000 Iowans utilized the clinics now slated for closure. Planned Parenthood clinics statewide serve nearly half of residents who use publicly-funded family planning services. Looking only at the four counties impacted by the closures, Planned Parenthood clinics served, at a…
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09Oct 2016 by Lynda Waddington
Mike Pence did what he had to do

Mike Pence did what he had to do

Gazette Column
Do not blame Mike Pence. In this week’s vice presidential debate Pence did the only thing he could. Wisconsin radio personality Charlie Sykes said it best when he described the logical outcome of years of attacks on the news media to Oliver Darcy, politics editor at Business Insider. “We’ve basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers,” he said, adding that now when Donald Trump says something outrageous and patently false, he’s expected to fall in line or be labeled a sellout. This is a “monster” created by conservatives, who are now “reaping the whirlwind.” “At a certain point, you wake up and you realize you have destroyed the credibility of any credible outlet out there,” Sykes said. And, no, Sykes hasn’t gone full tilt. His statements weren’t intended to…
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