Donna Meier
Election Information:
Party:
Republican
District:
13
Office:
State House or Assembly
Contact Information:
DonnaMeier4CT.com
Donna Meier 4 CT (Facebook)
Survey Responses:
S = Support
O = Oppose
NR = No Response
O = Oppose
NR = No Response
|
Life
|
S | O | NR |
|---|---|---|---|
1.Prohibiting Abortion: Prohibiting abortion after a baby’s heartbeat is detected, with limited exceptions such as to save the mother’s life or in cases of rape or incest. |
X | ||
2.Taxpayer Funded Abortion: Allowing taxpayer dollars to fund organizations that provide abortion. |
X | ||
3.Physician-Assisted Suicide: Allowing voluntary physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. |
X |
|
First Amendment
|
S | O | NR |
|---|---|---|---|
4.Conscience Rights for Professionals: Prohibiting the government from denying required licensure or certification to individuals because of their religious or political beliefs. |
X | ||
5.Conscience Rights for Faith-Based Organizations: Exempting faith-based organizations (e.g. adoption/foster care providers, private schools) from regulations that cause them to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. |
X | ||
6.Transparency in Banking: Allowing consumers to obtain a written explanation when a financial institution shuts down the consumer’s account to protect against ideologically driven cancellations. |
X | ||
7.Privacy in Financial Giving: Protecting confidential donor information so individuals are able to privately support charities and causes of their choice without fear of being doxed. |
X |
Candidate's Comments:
I strongly support all of these safeguards. I have watched with deep concern the efforts made on so many levels to deny people their constitutionally protected right to the free exercise of religion, speech and conscience. The thought that financial institutions can shut down people's accounts based on ideology or that people's private information can be made public as a means to manipulate them into silence, is deeply disturbing. I would oppose any legislation that would promote these positions. I am grateful for the work that ADF does in these areas.
|
Family
|
S | O | NR |
|---|---|---|---|
8.Parental Rights in Gender Identity Counseling: Allowing parents to obtain professional counseling for a child struggling with gender confusion to help the child find comfort with his or her biological sex. |
X | ||
9(a).Protected Class for Sexual Orientation: Elevating “sexual orientation” to a protected class alongside race, religion, sex, age, and disability in nondiscrimination law. |
X | ||
9(b).Protected Class for Gender Identity: Elevating “gender identity” to a protected class alongside race, religion, sex, age, and disability in nondiscrimination law. |
X |
Candidate's Comments:
Senate Joint Resolution 4 (SJ4) would also make gender identity AND ITS EXPRESSION a protected class, along with sexual orientation. To be clear, I believe in the innate value and dignity of every human being, regardless of their beliefs, values, ideology, expression, etc. Every person deserves to be treated with respect and kindness and to have the same legal protections. There are problems, however, with making these protected classes, as the CT legislature seeks to do. By protecting gender identity AND ITS EXPRESSION, I fear that parents could lose the right to provide guidance to their minor children who may be making life-changing decisions about their sexual identity. The developmental challenges of adolescence are identity, intimacy and individuation. This is common to every person transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Our bodies are changing, we move from play-based interactions with peers to primarily verbal interactions and we begin a process of individuating from our parents that will continue for years. I am concerned that adolescents who are encouraged into gender transitioning, either by their peers or adults in their lives, may be making a decision that they do not understand the full consequences of. Both chemical transition and surgical transition will eliminate the possibility of childbearing in their future and, in most cases, make them medically dependent for the rest of their lives. I think it is very important that parents be able to be part of this conversation.
|
Education and Public Safety
|
S | O | NR |
|---|---|---|---|
10.School Choice: Allowing the use of tax credits, vouchers, and/or education savings accounts to cover the cost of children attending the school of their parents’ choice, including private religious schools. |
X | ||
11.Free Speech at School: Protecting teachers and students from being forced to refer to a person by inaccurate pronouns that do not align with the person’s sex. |
X | ||
12.Parental Rights in School Healthcare Disclosure: Directing schools to inform parents of any mental, physical, or emotional health information and treatment that a child is receiving at school. |
X | ||
13.Transparency in School Curriculum & Activities: Giving parents access to the curriculum, presentations, and activities that their children are learning in school and allowing them to opt their children out of school extra-curricular activities, presentations, or specific lessons to which the parents object. |
X |
|
Health and Welfare
|
S | O | NR |
|---|---|---|---|
14.Medical Rights of Conscience: Protecting health care workers from losing their jobs if they decline to participate in a procedure or treatment that violates their personal beliefs and conscience. |
X | ||
15.Women’s Privacy: Preventing males who identify as female from entering sex-separated spaces intended for females, such as showers, locker rooms, bathrooms, dormitories, women’s shelters, prisons, etc. |
X | ||
16.Protecting Pregnancy Centers: Ensuring pregnancy centers that provide life-affirming support to women and their families are not targeted or penalized by government officials. |
X |
Candidate's Comments:
I selected "oppose" for the first question because it is so far removed from the abortion conversation in Connecticut. Connecticut's abortion law allows abortion up to 24 weeks and, in the case of a threat to the mother's life or health, up until 9 months. Currently, the Connecticut legislature is trying to pass legislation that would make abortion legal up to 9 months. Senate Joint Resolution Number 4 is an effort to make pregnant persons a protected class in the state constitution. This is what it says: "As used in this section, discrimination in the exercise or enjoyment of civil or political rights because of sex includes, but is not limited to, discrimination, in intent or effect, based on pregnancy, including preventing, initiating, continuing or terminating a pregnancy..." Following precedent in other states, this is effectively making abortion up to 9 months a state constitutional right. However, changing the state constitution is a 2-year process, involving a statewide vote, or a second vote of the legislature. In the meantime, the Department of Public Health simply edited the rules related to abortion. With the stroke of a pen, they removed conscience protections for medical professionals who are opposed to abortion, they removed the qualifier that abortion to 9 months could only be done when the mother's life or health were in danger (effectively making abortion to 9 months legal), and they removed the requirement that aborted babies born alive need to receive lifesaving treatment. This is where the battle lines are drawn in CT. This is the battle I am currently engaged in as a citizen. Legislation promoting physician assisted suicide comes up regularly in CT and has, so far, been defeated. I oppose physician assisted suicide because it is a slippery slope. In Canada today, teens who are depressed can access physician assisted suicide. This is heartbreaking because that teen might get through that depression with support and counseling and go on to live a full and meaningful life.