I’m a long-time Washington Post reader, and now located in, yes, central North Dakota.
In fact, much of the research used in the writing of Modern Medicine: What You’re Dying to Know came from the Washington Post.
With all the hoopla over the recent legislation passed here about abortion, it’s nice to connect with a perspective such as Alexandra Petri’s “In North Dakota, the Most Freedom! Unless you’re a woman.”
Thankfully, North Dakota has a few legislators like Kathy Hawkin who believe the state should be paying a lot more attention to caring for women and children once the children are here.
Hawken said that as a strong fiscal conservative, she is worried that the state will spend millions of dollars that could be put to better use defending these laws in court. “They could fund my childcare bill with what we’re going to spend on lawsuits,” she said….
Hawken said she has introduced bills during her 17 years in office that she considers to be “pro-life,” such as a prenatal care for minors bill and a bill ensuring quality childcare for single moms, but those were rejected by her colleagues. “It seems like we want to get [babies] here,” she said, “but we don’t care if they’re healthy once they get here. That’s just bad policy.”
As I’ve said in previous posts, with the oil interests in North Dakota, this state has the opportunity to develop and fund innovative health care solutions which could be a model for other states. Instead, the state legislators and its governor prefer to chase after the kind of press that plays well here in North Dakota, but very badly elsewhere. The residents of North Dakota deserve better from their governor and state legislators.
