Iowa Supreme Court upholds six-week abortion ban, rejects constitutionality of access to reproductive care
Highest Court in Iowa rule support the state’s six-week abortion ban on Friday, effectively reducing access to care before many even know that they are pregnant.
This law includes exceptions for the life of the pregnant woman and for fetal abnormalities that can lead to infant death—allowance that thing medical experts say rarely done IN practice.
Iowa’s ban also allows abortion in cases of rape or incest, but only if reported within 45 or 140 days. To be granted a rape or incest exception, according to rules set forth by the Iowa Board of Medicine before the court ruled, a doctor must gather information about how the pregnancy progressed and obtain a certification signed to confirm the information is correct.
This decision “will have a devastating impact on the already poor health conditions in Iowa and force people into pregnancy,” Francine Thompsonsaid Emma Goldman, CEO of the Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City. President and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States Ruth Richardson said the group has been preparing for this possibility for months. “Everyone deserves access to the full range of sexual and reproductive health services they need, including abortion, regardless of their ZIP code,” she said.
Until the new ban officially goes into effect in about three weeks, Iowans will still be able to have abortions in the state up to 20 weeks into a pregnancy, according to to the ACLU of Iowa.
“There is no right more sacred than life, and nothing deserves our fiercest protection than the innocent unborn,” Republican Gov. Kim ReynoldsWho reelected by 2022 about 19 percentage points, said. Reynolds shares that she is “deeply committed to helping women plan for motherhood, and promoting fatherhood and its importance in raising children.”
In one declareChairperson Joe Biden said the ban “puts women’s health and lives at risk,” adding, “Vice President Harris and I believe that women in every state must have the right to make deeply personal decisions about their health.”
Abortion access has changed for several years in Iowa. In 2017, Republican lawmakers in the state passed a 20-week ban with a three-day waiting period (which the courts later halted). In 2018, the legislature passed a six-week ban, which the state court promptly upheld. That same month, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the three-day waiting period violated the state’s constitution.
Fast forward to 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court decision IN Dobbs sets a new precedent for state lawmakers to use. Just four days later fish eggs was overturned, Governor Reynolds announced she would take the abortion issue back to state court, using Dobbs The two years since have been filled with new iterations of the law being enforced, court challenges and confusion for people seeking reproductive care in Iowa.
Iowa now join Fourteen states ban abortion in most cases, and three others—Florida, GeorgiaAnd South Carolina—with a 6-week gestation limit. Nationwide, 63 percent of Americans speak According to Pew, abortion should be legalized in all or most cases. And a Sign Up Des Moines/Mediacom Iowa Poll 2023 establish that 61% of Iowa adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Friday’s ruling addressed whether the state’s six-week ban imposes an “undue burden” on people seeking abortion care, a standard that Planned Parenthood has argued the abortion ban must meet under the state constitution. The test stems from a 2015 case in which the court ruled, in a series of federal findings, that abortion restrictions are unconstitutional if they impose “a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus is capable of viability.”
