Banning treatments in Idaho is the opposite of medical freedom | Opinion

Medical freedom

In recent years, the medical freedom movement has caught fire across the country and especially here in Idaho. Idahoans rightfully want the government to stay out of their business when it comes to healthcare.

This trend is a step in the right direction and an appropriate reaction to the forced mandates during the pandemic. However, in seeking to address the overreach from a few years ago, some lawmakers are approaching it backwards by trying to impose new mandates of their own.

Recent efforts in the Legislature to ban mRNA medicines illustrate this contradiction. No one should be forced to receive an mRNA treatment, or any other treatment, but taking away someone’s right to get one isn’t the answer.

These restrictions would have other serious unintended consequences. New medicines in development using mRNA are showing real potential to treat some of the deadliest cancers and rare diseases with few or no treatments. Bans on mRNA would put that research at risk, leaving the thousands of Idahoans who have chronic and life-threatening conditions with even fewer options.

If we really want to advance medical freedom principles in Idaho, we can’t apply them selectively.

Michael McGrane, Eagle

No worries

The war that was started Feb. 28 is still ongoing.

The Strait of Hormuz, like a revolving door, is open and then closed.

The demolished East Wing of the White House may become a ballroom funded partially by taxpayers.

The White House lawn, heavily damaged as a result of the 250 UFC fight, will grow back someday.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool no longer reflects.

Mary Feeny, Boise

Public land

When our state population doubles, when our farmland and open spaces are being turned into housing, apartments, stores, and data centers, what could be stupider than selling our public land off? The excuse is “it’s endowment land,” like this is some sacred cow that excuses selling public land to support our schools. Public money, taxes, should be used for that purpose. Selling public land to support our schools is an anachronism that our legislature should immediately change, our governor should step in and halt.

Gerald Davidson, Boise

Women in custody

A society’s values are revealed most clearly in how it treats people whose freedom, credibility and safety are constrained by institutions more powerful than they are.

Recent reporting on sexual abuse allegations in Idaho women’s prisons exposed more than individual misconduct. It exposed a structural failure; weak reporting systems, inconsistent investigations, limited transparency, and an institutional culture where protecting the agency can appear more urgent than protecting people in custody.

This is especially urgent because Idaho incarcerates women at the highest rate in the nation, roughly triple the national average. That distinction shouldn’t be treated as a statistic without consequence. It represents thousands of women placed under state control, often carrying histories of trauma, poverty, addiction, and survival.

Lawmakers were right to order an independent evaluation. But oversight cannot become another report that’s read, filed away, and forgotten once public attention shifts.

Women in state custody do not surrender their humanity, bodily autonomy, or right to safety. Idaho must establish independent reporting channels, transparent accountability measures, meaningful consequences for staff misconduct, and legislative oversight that continues beyond the investigation.

Accountability isn’t anti-corrections. It’s anti-abuse. Idaho cannot claim justice while women behind prison walls are left proving they deserve protection.

Devon Van Kleek, Boise

Foreign aid

Foreign aid is easy to dismiss until we remember what happens when poverty, hunger and instability are left to grow. Crises do not stay neatly inside national borders. They spill outward through conflict, migration, disease and economic disruption.

That is why the International Affairs Budget matters. It is not just charity; it is prevention. A small share of the federal budget helps support global health, food security, education and economic development programs that make communities more stable before they reach a breaking point.

As an Idaho resident and Borgen Project volunteer, I believe American leadership should include helping people build safer and more self-sufficient lives. That is not weakness. It is smart policy.

Idaho may be far from many of the world’s poorest communities, but we are not separate from the world. Preventing crises is almost always cheaper, smarter and more humane than reacting after they explode.

I encourage Sen. Mike Crapo, Sen. Jim Risch and Rep. Mike Simpson to support strong funding for the International Affairs Budget and policies that reduce global poverty.

Clayton Elsbree, Ketchum

Blessed by God?

Some members of the current Executive Branch Cabinet level are pushing the idea that violently attacking other nations and expelling people from the United States who are “undocumented” (and some who are legally “documented”) is blessed by God and Jesus Christ. They publicly invoke passages from the Bible to justify this position, taking scripture out-of-context. I believe this is heretical, sacrilegious and blasphemous.

Jesus says “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Mark 12:31, and “Do to others what you would have them do to you,” Matthew 7:12.

I don’t recall ever hearing or reading that Jesus says to kill in his name.

Keep religion out of government!

William Brudenell, Boise

Chainsaw rule

Recently, the U.S. Forest Service quietly approved a three-year waiver allowing the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association to use gas-powered chainsaws across 542 miles of the Frank Church Wilderness. This exclusive exemption applies only to licensed commercial outfitters. If an everyday hunter, rafter, or backpacker brings a chainsaw into that same wilderness to clear a path, they face heavy federal fines.

As a hunting guide and hunter, whitewater enthusiast, and former Idaho Outfitters and Guides Licensing Board Enforcement Agent from the late 1990s, I strongly oppose this development.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 was never designed to guarantee business profitability or manicured access. It was enacted to preserve the untrammeled character of the land. Section 4(c) strictly bans motorized equipment because combustion engines fracture the very solitude inhabitants seek.

If a sportsman encounters a massive blowdown, that isn’t a management failure; it’s an authentic feature of a wild ecosystem. Navigating obstacles is part of the humility required when entering the wild. Bypassing public comment to hand a private commercial trade group a motorized loophole shifts the paradigm from preservation to domination. We must keep the wild truly wild.

Jim Loucks, Boise