Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs) has said he will not personally intervene to move the late term abortion bill, House File 657 (formerly HF 5) out of the Senate Government Oversight Committee to the Senate floor. He said, “It is in committee. If it comes out of committee, we will make a decision when it gets to the floor, and that has not happened yet.”
Does he believe he won’t be culpable if this bill fails to pass? How many other times has he used his position to kill bills. We know if he wanted this bill out of committee it would be done. Does he to shift blame to the committee and its chairman, State Senator Tom Courtney (D-Burlington) that he has political cover?
We know better, and his constituents know as well. The Council Bluffs newspaper, The Daily Nonpareil, said in their editorial on Tuesday that Gronstal is not representing his constituents. They wrote:
The question remains, if Gronstal is concerned about the content of the House bill, why has he not amended that bill in the Senate or introduced a Senate bill that would limit late-term abortions.
Gronstal’s reluctance to fix the bill or introduce an acceptable alternative has a lot of people – including us – wondering just who’s interest Gronstal is looking out for? Apparently, it’s not the majority of his constituents.
Well he’s looking out for Planned Parenthood of course as they are registered against this bill. What he will allow, as Jenifer Bowen of Iowa Right to Life and Cheryl Sullenger of Operation Rescue explained in their press conference yesterday, is a butcher who has killed not only the preborn, but mothers as well into our state. If Leroy Carhart is allowed in, it will in effect make Iowa the late term abortion capital, Sullenger claimed.
So Senator Gronstal by not helping to move this bill forward you are complicit in its failure. There is no political cover for this one. You need to decide if you are going to represent your constituents or abortion advocates.
Addendum: I also wanted to include the HD video of Wednesday’s press conference:
