In the People's Republic of Iowa City, does dissent equal mental illness?

People usually think that Iowans are overstating things when they speak of the seat of the University of Iowa as "the People's Republic of Iowa City." But every once in an while, something happens that demonstrates just how extreme and distorted things get out there.

Donna Holman is 72, and an anti-abortion activist who until recently did sidewalk counseling at Planned Parenthood's Iowa City abortion clinic. She and her husband, it should be said, tend to be somewhat extreme in their rhetoric, and are unpopular even in Johnston County's pro-life movement. In any case, she was arrested after some of the women using the Planned Parenthood facility protested that she was harassing them.

Thing is, the whole incident was filmed- and no harassment is visible. Furthermore, when the case came to court, the complainants didn't show up.

Case dismissed, right? Wrong.

Johnston County Magistrate Karen Egerton found her guilty on the basis of the hearsay testimony of Planned Parenthood employees. She was given a thirty day suspended sentence and a year's probation, deprived for life of her right to exercise her freedom of speech by sidewalk counselling, and ordered to be psychiatrically evaluated (the evaluation the Holmans provided wasn't good enough, apparently because the doctor who provided it isn't licenced in Iowa), and- if the doctor so mandates- to take anti-psychotic drugs to mitigate her opposition to abortion.

Now, by all indications, the Holmans are obnoxious people and embarassments to the pro-life movement. And for all we know, maybe Mrs. Holman is psychotic; certainly Mr. Holman's comments about psychiatry are something less than, well, mainstream. Nobody argues that either of the Holmans are good candidates for martyrdom (even though some on both sides seem to have suggested that they wouldn't be disappointed at such an outcome).

But with the circumstances of the arrest smacking of a set-up pre-arranged between Planned Parenthood and the far-Left Iowa City political and legal establishment, and with a conviction having been entered despite the absence of the complaintants and on the basis of hearsay evidence by employees of an interested party, serious questions exist here as to whether the magistrate in question might not be using psychiatry for pretty much the same purpose it was used for in Soviet Russia: as a way to discredit and silence dissent.

Perhaps the ACLU should be consulted. Surely nobody in Iowa City would object to that.