DES MOINES – Liberals in the Iowa Senate blocked the re-appointment of two picks by Governor Terry Branstad to the Iowa Board of Medicine this week.
“This is the Board of Medicine,” Democratic Senator Janet Petersen said during debate on the matter. “This is not Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds’s board that they politically stack with people who won’t back a woman’s constitutional right for a legal medical procedure.”
The rub was that the two Branstad picks, board chair Diane Clark of Lake Mills and Dr. Hamed Tewfik of Iowa City, in 2013 had opposed a procedure in which a webcam is used remotely to give women baby-killing pills, thus causing an abortion.
The appointees needed two-thirds of Senators to approve their appointment, and both fell short.
Petersen, an abortion supporter, said she “was proud to stand up for Iowa women and Iowa families tonight in the Iowa Senate. I was the Democratic floor leader for both nominations. Senator Randy Feenstra of Sioux County handled one of the nominations for the Republicans.”
State Senator Tony Bisognano, a Polk county Democrat, chimed in, saying “I helped Senate Democrats block the reappointment of two Branstad/Reynolds appointees to the Board of Health. Both had helped shutdown a successful tele-medicine program for political reasons.”