The Iowa Supreme Court said Friday that the state’s strict abortion law is legal, ordering a lower court to do so solve a temporary blockage about the law and allowing Iowa to ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy — before many women know they are pregnant.
The 4-3 ruling is a victory for Republican lawmakers, and Iowa agrees more than a dozen other states with restrictive abortion laws after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Currently, 14 states have near-complete bans on all stages of pregnancy, and three states ban abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy.
The majority of the Iowa Supreme Court reiterated Friday that there is no constitutional right to abortion. As the state requested, they instructed the courts to assess whether the government has a legitimate interest in restricting the procedure, rather than whether there is an undue burden on people seeking access to abortion.
Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds immediately released a statement celebrating the decision.
“I am pleased that the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld the will of the people of Iowa,” she said.
Chief Justice Susan Christensen issued an emphatic dissent, writing, “Today, the majority of our court deprives Iowa women of their bodily autonomy by holding that there is no fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy under our state constitution. I cannot sustain this decision.”
There are limited circumstances under Iowa law that allow abortions after six weeks of pregnancy: rape, if reported to law enforcement or a health care provider within 45 days; incest, if reported within 145 days; if the fetus has a fetal abnormality “incompatible with life”; or if the pregnancy endangers the patient’s life. The state’s medical board recently issued rules on how doctors must comply with the law.
The ruling is the foretaste of the end of a years-long legal battle over abortion restrictions in Iowa. This battle escalated in 2022 when both the Iowa Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned decisions establishing the constitutional right to abortion.
Candace Gibson, director of state policy at the Guttmacher Institute, an organization that advocates for abortion access, said the ruling will force women seeking abortions to leave Iowa, “undertake a self-managed abortion” or carry out an unwanted pregnancy.
“Enforcing this six-week ban in Iowa is a shocking blow to the reproductive autonomy of Iowans,” Gibson said in a statement.
The Iowa law has been passed with only Republican support in a special one-day session last JulyThe next day, a legal challenge was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic.
The law was in effect for a few days before a district judge suspended it. Reynolds appealed this decision.
Planned Parenthood North Central States said at the time that it was staying open late and making hundreds of phone calls to prepare patients for the uncertainty, and rescheduling abortion appointments in other states for those who wanted them. Court documents showed that clinics in Iowa scheduled hundreds of abortion appointments over a two-week period last July, most of which were past the six-week mark.
Since then, Planned Parenthood has suspended abortion services in two Iowa cities, including one in Des Moines. The other location in Des Moines does not currently have the capacity to serve patients seeking an abortion, so abortion medications and the procedure are offered about 35 miles north in Ames.
Before Friday, Planned Parenthood providers had again communicated with people seeking upcoming appointments about the potential outcomes of the high court’s decision, Masie Stilwell, the state’s director of public affairs, told The Associated Press in early June. That included the possibility that abortion would no longer be legal for their circumstances and that they would need to work with staff to reschedule appointments in other states.
Abortion access is expected to be a major issue in the 2024 elections across the country. But it remains to be seen whether Friday’s decision will turn the tide in an increasingly red Iowa.
Rita Hart, chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, said Friday that Republicans “have gone too far” with the restrictive law, and “Iowa voters will hold them accountable this November.”
