And the admission is advertised, "free." You do not have to pay the campaign a cent to attend and get your questions either answered or ducked.
A commitment is not shown by platitudes, blowing smoke, or evasiveness and general ambiguities.
Below are a range of direct possible questions whereby, in hearing - in demanding - answers from Elwyn Tinklenberg, ideally on the record, you might become a more informed voter.
Don't let him feed you a line. Don't let him just feed you beans.
Feed him precise questions so you can know where he stands. If he has a stance at all.
The Ramsey bean feed is Sept. 25, 5-8 pm. Across Sunwood Drive from the Ramsey City Hall, east of the yellow smiling face of Ben Dover, on his pedestal. By Jim Deal's multifaceted Plaza building. East side of it, ground floor.
Again -- Admission is free - he may want it to be a contribution solicitation event, but it has not been promoted or advertised that way - as fundraiser only.
You don't have to pay him a thing, to require he be explicit on the issues important to you.
These are good questions - or issue statements he can quickly indicate he agrees or disagrees with. So you decide, which of them are of major interest to YOU?
1. What if a law were proposed that a biological father or husband must be notified or approve prior to an abortion occurring? Part of the pro-life movement involves the use of the marriage contract to dictate a mandatory notification.
2. The right to die?
3. Offer anesthesia to pregnant women seeking abortions?
4. What establishes personhood? A fetus or a live child?
5. The state of MN has allowed stillborns a death certificate.
6. Is a fetus separate from that of the mother or a part of her body?
7. Does a fetus have legal rights? When?
8. Parental notification when a minor would like an abortion?
9. Should a court appoint a legal guardian to “guard” a mentally handicapped woman’s fetus?
10. Emergency contraception or even regular contraception is abortion?
11. Public funds allowed to be used for an abortion?
12. Sex education, abstinence only or w/ information on available methods of birth control? age-appropriate, and medically accurate sex education that teaches both abstinence and information about contraception
13. 15% of Americans lack healthcare with a disproportionate amount of women and children suffering. How would effective pre-natal care be given if no abortions occur?
14. Birth control is basic, essential health care.
15. Ensuring the independence and objectivity of our courts.
16. Late term abortions?
17. Embryonic Stem Cell research?
18. Allow or not? Congress bans federal employees from choosing a health-care plan that covers abortion
19. One proposal to block women's access to mifepristone (RU 486) would impose a number of onerous and unnecessary restrictions on the drug’s availability.
20. Allow for public viewing of women’s names who’ve had abortion?
21. Emergency contraception, RU 486, available or not? An abortion or not?
22. Allow pharmacists to conscientiously object to serving womens needs concerning birth control or emergency contraception?
23. Anti-choice activists are trying to perpetuate myths surrounding the Federal Refusal Clause to make it seem less harmful than it really is. which threatens women's health by permitting health-care corporations to gag their doctors and other health-care providers from giving women information about how to access abortion services.
24. The global gag rule endangers the health of the world's poorest women by prohibiting U.S. funds to go to any overseas health clinic unless it agrees not to use its own, private, non-U.S. funds for: (1) abortion services, (2) abortion-related advocacy, or (3) abortion counseling or referrals.
25. Laws promoting insurance coverage for contraception
26. Lift the Ban on Federally Funded Abortion Services for Military Victims of Rape and Incest
27. Many prominent national medical and public-health organizations support confidential health services for young people.
28. There are many misconceptions surrounding the anti-choice "Child Custody Protection Act" (CCPA). CCPA is a dangerous anti-choice measure that threatens young women's health.
29. Since 1973, Congress has limited a woman's right to choose by enacting dangerous refusal clauses to permit a broad range of individuals and institutions to refuse to provide, pay for, counsel about, or even refer for medical treatment pose serious dangers to Americans' health.
30. Despite the fact that confidential family-planning services help teenagers obtain timely medical advice and appropriate health care, these services are under constant attack in Congress.
31. Supreme Court decision in Scheidler v. NOW is a hindrance to reproductive-health-care clinics' efforts to protect their patients and employees from anti-choice violence and intimidation.
32. The latest in a long line of political attacks on the Title X family-planning program came in 2001, when anti-choice Rep. (now Sen.) David Vitter (R-LA) announced his intention to offer an amendment making any private entity that had provided an abortion, under any circumstances, ineligible for a Title X family-planning grant. In a stunning retreat from more than three decades of precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the first-ever federal ban on abortion, which outlaws certain second-trimester abortions and has no exception in cases when a woman's health is in danger. This decision represents a monumental departure from prior cases, and with it the Court effectively eliminated one of Roe v. Wade's core protections: that a woman's health must always be paramount.
33. The "Child Custody Protection Act," a dangerous anti-choice measure that threatens young women's health, would prohibit anyone other than a parent from accompanying a young woman across state lines for an abortion if the home state's parental-involvement law has not been met.
34. The "Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act" would impose an impossibly complex patchwork of parental-involvement laws on women and doctors across the country with the goal to curb young women’s access to private, confidential health services.
35. Subvert science in favor of an ideological agenda on a range of health issues.
36. The line between contraception and abortion is often blurred, intentionally and unintentionally, in the course of policy discussions on emergency contraception (also known as the "morning-after" pill) and the early-abortion option mifepristone (also known as RU 486). The distinction between the two is important, especially since anti-choice lawmakers are trying to restrict women's access to these and other reproductive-health services. Emergency contraception prevents pregnancy while RU 486 terminates a pregnancy
37. The anti-choice movement has for years tried to restrict, control, and manipulate the information doctors give women facing unplanned pregnancies. Unable to shut down legitimate public-health clinics, they are instead building a network across the country of parallel fake clinics - so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs). While there are centers that do not deceive women or attempt to coerce them into making choices against their will, many CPCs use deceptive and intimidating practices to prevent women from accessing the full range of reproductive-health options.
38. Title X (ten) of the Public Health Service Act, the cornerstone of the federal domestic family-planning program, was enacted with broad bipartisan support in l970. Each year, approximately 5 million young and low-income women and men receive basic health care through the 4,600 clinics nationwide receiving Title X funds. For many women, particularly those who do not qualify for Medicaid and those who have no health insurance, Title X clinics provide the only basic health care that they receive.
You can do your part to see if Elwyn Tinklenberg's earned the right to use Wellstone Green. Paul would not have ducked a single one of those questions.
Do you want a Representative who would?
It is a chance, in person, to see how far and sincere Elwyn Tinklenberg's commitment to choice is - it is in the DFL platform, but is it in his?
________UPDATE_______
Obviously, some of the numbered items are neither questions nor easy agree/disagree items, but they might test someone's awareness of facts or points of current vigorous contention between the choice and anti-choice camps.
My invitation - run the list by Tinklenberg. Run it by Al Franken. Consider the responses and then decide, apart from Playboy writings in the past or having once been in the pulpit, which is your view of the "better" DFL candidate - meaning better to you and your views, because it is your vote Elwyn Tinklenberg wants.
AGAIN - Make him work to try to earn your vote. Don't take blowing smoke as an answer.
