Texas Archives » Lynda Waddington

22May 2017 by Lynda Waddington

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…

02Oct 2016 by Lynda Waddington

White House Housing Toolkit a good start

Gazette Column

Have outdated and onerous zoning ordinances and environmental protections stifled housing development and local economies? A new federal report says they have, contributing to issues such as income inequality, gentrification, strained safety nets, commute lengths, racial segregation and homelessness. The past few days have been nearly overwhelming. We survived (and at least partially mitigated) another historic flood, did our best to absorb this election season’s first presidential debate, and remain in mourning for the latest young life claimed by senseless gun violence. It’s little wonder a new housing report didn’t spawn big, local headlines. [caption id="attachment_150" align="alignright" width="640"] (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)[/caption] Yet this White House produced “toolkit” offers a road map not only for the housing-strapped California coast, but for Midwestern cities like Iowa City and Cedar Rapids as they…

30Jun 2016 by Lynda Waddington

SCOTUS told us what we already knew

Gazette Blog

Abortion restrictions imposed by the Texas Legislature in the name of women’s health should have never made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. No matter what side of the abortion debate you are on, the dirty little not-so-secret behind regulations thinly wrapped inside a facade of improving women’s health was clear from the beginning. Unable to outright ban abortion, those opposed concentrated on what some openly referred to as “the next best thing,” erecting barriers to access. Years ago, and sometimes still today, those barriers were literal, amounting to lines of demonstrators who aimed to keep women out of health care facilities that provided abortions. They’ve also been psychological, like the published lists of home addresses and telephone numbers or photographs of clinic workers and doctors who perform abortions. Perhaps…

24Aug 2014 by Lynda Waddington

You don’t want to go home again

Gazette Column

The picture tucked into my photo album wasn’t what I expected. In that photo, I’m a little girl, holding a beach ball and snuggled into my father’s bare chest as his feet are covered by sand and the tide in Galveston, Texas. Several of my siblings, all in various poses, are gathered around us. Gary is sitting pretzel style in wet sand. Terrie has one hip out and hands up to shield her eyes from the sun. With one hand on my back and another supporting my beach ball, Cathy smiles directly into the camera. We are sandy, hot and happy in the snapshot. It is one of many family memories, and one I knew would not be recreated this past week when two of my sisters and I traveled…