On Election Day, Vote for Candidates with Science-Based Policies, Not Politicians Who Ignore Evidence

In 2009, as he began to push for policies such as affordable health care against Republican opposition, President Barack Obama said that elections have consequences. The phrase "red state legislatures ban abortion, prevent the country from taking actions to combat the climate crisis, permit easier access to firearms, and oppose a vigorous public health response to the Pandemic" has been echoed by Republican leaders recently. The consequences of this fall's vote are extraordinary.

There is overwhelming scientific support for one policy direction over another. There is a choice between candidates who follow the scientific evidence or act as if it is not true. You will see local and federal candidates who support policies based on tested scientific evidence and others who support policies based on assumptions and biases on Election Day. Vaccines, the Internet, cleaner air and water are some of the new sectors brought about by the scientific method. Office seekers who use research-based evidence will help our country prosper. Those who don't accept the evidence will suffer. The differences are highlighted in the following survey.

Sex and reproductive rights. When the Supreme Court allowed states to ban or restrict abortion rights, they were able to force people to have babies against their will. Women who received an abortion were compared with women who weren't. The women had worse health after they were denied an abortion. They were more likely to be out of work. It's more dangerous to get pregnant than to get an abortion. A study estimates that a national ban on contraceptives would increase maternal deaths by 21 percent. Office seekers who support abortion bans don't pay attention to the evidence.

The politicians who oppose gender-affirming health care are blinkered. Texas directed state officials to investigate child abuse while Alabama enacted a law criminalizing it. Florida doesn't want the treatments to happen. These positions don't pay attention to the benefits of these treatments. The study looked at teenagers who were denied hormone-blocking treatments that temporarily delayed puberty while they considered their gender. The teens went on to have a higher risk of suicide. The effects are not permanent.

There is health and the outbreak of a disease. Several key health-care provisions were included in the budget bill. The power to negotiate drug prices was one of the things that was given to Medicare. According to a study in the journal JAMA, more than 47 percent of new drugs released in 2020– 2021, cost more than $150,000 a year, and only 9 percent of new drugs topped that figure as recently as 2013). Senate Republicans opposed the bill because it would give more Americans access to life-saving drugs. There was a provision to cap the cost of the drug at $35 a month for people with private insurance. Due to the high cost of a single dose in the U.S., many people with type 1 diabetes don't take it. The evidence shows that affordable health care can save lives. A study shows that states that expanded eligibility for Medicaid saved thousands of lives. People lost their lives when states voted against expansion.

The US's response to the swine flu has been filled with mistakes. Basic public health measures have been very hard to get in many conservative Republican-led localities. The U.S. climbed to a nationwide toll of more than one million deaths from COVID despite the fact that many places resisted mask mandates. The power of local public health agencies was taken away by several Republican-led state legislature. The officials in Florida refused to recommend the vaccine for children. A study showed that vaccines were 94 percent effective at keeping kids out of the hospital when they were young. There were no serious adverse health events in the vaccine trials.

The gun is safe. More children and young adults are killed by guns in the US than by cars, according to the most recent data. Most of the thousands of victims are shot one or two at a time, and the pace of mass shootings in 2022, at least one incident a day where at least four people were killed or injured, grabs attention. People of color are more likely to die. The majority of the dead are black. Deaths do not tell the whole story. In the most recent year for which data is available, 85,000 people were wounded by gunfire, and many of them have pain and disability for the rest of their lives. Many politicians want to make it easier to get weapons of mass destruction.

More armed good guys will stop more armed bad guys. After the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, where the police did not stop one bad guy, Senator Ted Cruz used this disproven refrain. An armed bystander shot the attacker 22 times out of 433 active shooter incidents, according to research done by investigators at Texas State University. The carnage is done even when a good guy has a weapon. An armed neighbor shot at the church shooter but only after 25 people had been killed, including a pregnant woman, and 22 wounded.

Research shows that when guns are in a home, they are more likely to be used to commit crimes. There was a study looking at gun ownership among murder and suicide victims. People who did not keep guns in the house were more likely to become a murder victim. The chance of dying by suicide was more than double. The last tragic number is the number of suicides that occur each year.

There are ways to keep guns out of the hands of people. Candidates who support these approaches should get votes. There should be safe-storage firearm laws in place. Universal background checks, mandatory licensing requirements, red flag laws, and bans on assault-style weapons and magazines that hold enormous amounts of bullets are all effective measures.

It's climate. The climate bill passed after being slashed from trillions to billions of dollars in spending. There are funds for clean energy projects in poor communities. Some Republican-dominated legislatures are making it difficult to cut fossil fuel use. According to scientific consensus, these reductions are needed to stop the temperature rise that's causing disasters in the US. Several Republican state lawmakers have introduced bills that would penalize companies if they stop investing in fossil fuels. New construction that doesn't use natural gas as a fuel source is banned in Texas.

State bills that prevent schools from teaching about racism and sexism in American history is one of the important issues that divides candidates. There are promises to reduce inflation. Take a hard look at the attitudes of these office seekers. We would like you to vote for science.

You can join the conversation online by visiting Scientific American and sending a letter to the editor.