It's the 'telemed' part, not the 'abortion' part they object to

What do you do when you are a fetus fetishizing tea bagger but governor of a fairly progressive state? Or at least one that was the first in the US to offer medical abortions by teleconferencing?

When you're Iowa ReThuglican Governor Terry Branstad, this is what you do.

First, appoint all ten members of the Iowa Board of Medicine. Check.

Then, hold hearings into the 'safety' of the procedure. Check.

Make sure the former anti-choice legislator and chair of the board is an idiot. Check.

Dr. Greg Hoversten, the state board’s chairman, suggested that the system amounted to an experiment on Iowa women.

Have the board listen to the evidence -- all good -- then have them vote 8-2 to effectively ban the procedure on the basis of safety. Check.

Now let board members ignore a 2010 report written by a board investigator after several months of looking into safety concerns of the regime (presumably raised by fetus fetishists). Check.

The board’s chairman, Dr. Greg Hoversten, told the Register last week that he and his colleagues did not read the report before voting Friday to effectively ban use of the video system.

(I mean, who knows what that report might have said? That telemed abortion was JUST as evil and dangerous and life-threatening as fetus fetishists contend?)

Pay attention. The next part is key.

When two doctors request a copy of that damning report, refuse to release it. Check.

Oh, they had a good reason of course.

The board’s executive director, Mark Bowden, said in an email to The Des Moines Register on Wednesday that state law says such investigative reports are confidential. If the board files formal charges against a doctor, he said, the doctor would have a right to a copy. But since no charges were filed in 2011, he said, the report must be kept under wraps, even from the agency and doctors it concerns.

Got that? No charges were laid, so the report must be kept confidential.

Nah. That doesn't stink at all.

But it does demonstrate the essence of current conservatism: Remain wilfully ignorant, make decisions on pure ideology, then keep everyone else just as ignorant.

The doctors are considering a lawsuit to get the report.

Here's a long and thoughtful blogpost by Kelly Bourdet about telemed abortion in Iowa. Bourdet goes on to make the obvious point. Telemedicine is used in all kinds of situations, for all kinds of treatments. It's already used in the US military, for example.

But it is ONLY in this application of the new tech does anyone 'worry' about its safety or appropriateness or whatever.

Odd, eh wot?