All About Iowa

Everything you need to know about the 6-week ban

Terrible news out of Iowa today: the state Supreme Court has upheld a 6-week abortion ban, ending a lower court’s injunction that had been allowing patients in the state to get care.

In short, we’ve lost another state, and access has been further and seriously eroded.

This is important: Abortion is still legal right now, and for the next few weeks. The ALCU of Iowa says that the case needs to go back to a lower court, and that process will take at least 21 days.

As you can imagine, abortion rights advocates and doctors in the state are mourning, and rightfully afraid about the health of patients. They’re also angry. From OBGYN Dr. Emily Boevers:

“I hope that our governor will be available by telephone to take the calls wondering if we pass that line where patients are deadly ill and we can perform life-saving care for her.”

And a statement from the Iowa Abortion Access Fund (IAAF) lays it plain: “Make no mistake: This law will result in the death of Iowans.”

IAAF also points out that Iowa voters support abortion rights. Multiple polls show that over 60% of people in the state want abortion to be legal in all or most cases. This makes Gov. Kim Reynolds’ statement about the ruling all the more obscene; she pretended that voters wanted this abortion ban:

“Iowa voters have spoken clearly through their elected representatives, both in 2018 when the original heartbeat bill was passed and signed into law, and again in 2023 when it passed by an even larger margin. I’m glad that the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld the will of the people of Iowa.”

If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve been tracking the phrase “the will of the people” for a while now. Republicans are using it more and more to distract from the fact that they’re passing abortion bans against voters’ wishes. That’s also why Reynolds said that voters spoke “through their elected representatives,” another growing conservative talking point. The idea is that voters already made their voices heard on abortion by electing their reps (voter suppression and gerrymandering be damned), so they don’t need a direct say on abortion rights.

---

Read more about conservative messaging on “the will of the people:”

The GOP's Panicked Messaging

---

The Ban

Let’s talk about what Iowa’s ban actually says and does, because there are some really important (and troubling) details. As you know, 6-week bans prohibit abortions before most people know that they’re pregnant. And as is the case with other bans, Iowa’s so-called exceptions are written in order to make them near-impossible to use.

For example, Republicans claim that the law allows for miscarriage treatment. It doesn’t. The ban states that miscarriage care is permitted “if not all of the products of conception are expelled,” but it’s banned if there’s a “fetal heartbeat.” The vast majority of post-Roe horror stories from miscarrying women have come from those who were denied care because there was still a fetal heartbeat. This has led to women going septic, hemorrhaging, and being turned away from hospital emergency rooms until their fetus’ heartbeat stops or their lives are in danger.

There is also a supposed exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. However, the law doesn’t define what that means beyond requiring a doctor to “certify” that the abnormality “is incompatible with life.” As we’ve seen in other states, it’s unclear whether a fetus has a fatal condition if it would live for minutes, days, weeks, or more. The language is deliberately vague to scare doctors out of providing care. (We also know that anti-choice states are increasingly mandating women with fatal fetal abnormalities to be ‘counseled’ by crisis pregnancy centers disguising themselves as prenatal counselors. I’m looking into what Iowa’s rules are on that count.)

Then there is the so-called rape exception: Iowa’s ban requires a victim to report their attack within 45 days; incest victims get 140 days. Everyone knows that the vast majority of sexual violence victims don’t report their attacks. That’s why Republicans created this mandate; it’s a way to stop most victims from getting care from the get-go.

Incredibly, it gets worse. The Iowa Board of Medicine released abortion guidelines for doctors that require them to ask rape victims for details about their attack, and make a “good-faith assessment that the woman is being truthful.” They even recommend that providers have the woman sign a document stating she isn’t lying.

They want doctors to be detectives, destroying any trust with their patients, and for patients to prove they were really attacked. In fact, an earlier version of the guidelines demanded that a woman’s attack be “prosecutable” before a doctor could provide care.

These aren’t suggested guidelines or bureaucratic language that can be ignored: Doctors who don’t accurately asses if their patients are rape victims could face revocation of their medical license or fines up to $10,000.

Finally, there is very little information both in Iowa’s ban and in the guidelines for doctors on what constitutes a “medical emergency” that would make an abortion permissible. As we’ve seen in so many other anti-abortion states, doctors will be left to wait until women are on death’s door before they can legally provide them care.

The Ripple Effects

We know what happens in states where abortion is banned. It’s not just that women suffer from being denied abortion care; getting any sort of reproductive health care in Iowa is about to get much more difficult. When abortion is banned, doctors leave, maternity wards shut down and maternal health deserts—which already define one-third of Iowa counties—grow.

The ban also opens the door to restrictions on other kinds of reproductive healthcare, like IVF. Back in March, Iowa Republicans advanced a bill that would make it a felony to “cause the death” of an “unborn person.” The bill didn’t include protections for IVF. Thankfully, the legislation was tabled after a national backlash erupted in response to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children.” However, with Iowa’s 6-week ban enacted, Republicans could be emboldened to once again try to enshrine fetal personhood.

At the end of the day, this is just another reminder of how women are not seen as full human beings. Even Iowa Chief Justice Susan Christensen recognized as much, writing in her dissenting opinion today that “the only female lives that this statute treats with any meaningful regard and dignity are the unborn lives of female fetuses.”

“After that, this statute forces pregnant women (and young girls) to endure and suffer through life-altering health complications that range from severe sepsis requiring limb amputation to a hysterectomy so long as those women are not at death’s door.”

But it was author and fellow Substacker Lyz Lenz who perfectly articulated in a MSNBC op-ed what it means to be a woman in a state with an abortion ban:

“It’s exhausting to live in a state that I love and year after year, hear men in the Statehouse debate and rationalize how I have less of a right to privacy than a handgun owner, or a bag of trash sitting on a curb, which can’t be searched without a warrant. It’s exhausting to be relegated to the role of second-class citizen watching politicians bow their heads in prayer for unborn children; meanwhile, mothers who are very much alive are having their rights taken away. I am tired of constantly playing the role of eternal supplicant, begging for my right to live and live with dignity and respect.”

If you’re as pissed off as I am about this law, donate to the Iowa Abortion Access Fund right now. Don’t wait and put it off—send them as much as you can afford, and consider making it a reoccurring donation. I’ve seen the Abortion, Every Day community do incredible things when it comes to fundraising, so I’m counting on you.