Iowa Supreme Court Allows Six-Week Abortion Ban to Go Into Effect

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state’s six-week abortion ban can stand, a decision that sharply limits access to the procedure and fulfills a long-standing goal of the state’s Republican leaders.

The 4-3 ruling drastically reduced the time frame for legal abortions in Iowa — the previous standard was 22 weeks — and meant that many women could travel to nearby states like Illinois or Minnesota to have the procedure. For Iowa Republicans, the decision marked the realization of a long-held policy goal and vindication after previous setbacks in the courts. For Democrats, it was a painful reminder of how much political ground they’ve lost in Iowa and, they hoped, an election-year warning to voters across the country that Republicans would continue to try to restrict abortion wherever they gain power.

“There is no right more sacred than life, and nothing more deserving of our strongest defense than the innocent, unborn,” Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said in a statement, adding: “I am pleased that the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the will of the people of Iowa.”

Senate Democratic leader Pam Jochum called it “a tragic day in Iowa history.”

“This despicable and dangerous ruling cannot be the last word on reproductive rights and personal freedom in Iowa,” she said in a statement. “Activist judges and anti-abortion Republicans should not be allowed to dictate the lives of Iowans.”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ended the nation’s right to abortion in 2022, state legislatures and courts have become central battlegrounds on this issue. Many conservative states, largely in the South and Midwest, have moved to ban or sharply restrict the procedure, while other states have passed new abortion protections.

In Iowa, Republican lawmakers, who control the state legislature, twice tried to impose a six-week ban. The state Supreme Court, made up of Republican appointees, deadlocked last year over whether to uphold the first law, passed in 2018, leaving in place a lower court order.

Ms. Reynolds responded by calling a special session, during which Republicans quickly passed a new six-week ban, over the objections of Democrats and abortion rights advocates. A state district court had blocked enforcement while the new law was challenged, meaning women in the state could continue to seek abortions up to about 22 weeks of pregnancy.

“Honestly, I think there are people from Iowa who just thought, ‘We keep getting bailed out by the courts,’ or, ‘It’s theoretical, it’s not real,'” said Jennifer Konfrst, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives. Iowa delegates. “But unfortunately, here we are, and the consequences will be devastating.”

The state Supreme Court’s ruling Friday overturned the temporary injunction and sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings. Advocates on both sides of the issue said they expected abortions after six weeks to remain legal for at least several more days while the district court prepared to enforce the high court’s order.

Abortion is still legal in some states bordering Iowa, including Illinois and Minnesota. Other nearby states, including Missouri and South Dakota, have banned abortion in almost all circumstances. The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, said Iowa has five abortion clinics and estimated that clinicians performed about 4,200 abortions in the state last year.

The Iowa Law of 2023 that became the focus of a legal challenge that allowed abortions up to the point where there was what the legislation called “detectable fetal heartbeat,” a term medical groups dispute. The law assumed that this was about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women knew they were pregnant. Florida, Georgia and South Carolina also ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

Iowa law included exceptions for rape or incest, when the woman’s life was in serious danger or she was at risk of certain permanent injuries, or when there were abnormalities in the fetus that were “incompatible with life.”

a Des Moines Register-Mediacom Iowa Survey Last year, 61 percent of adults in the state believed abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while 35 percent believed it should be illegal in most or all cases.

But while Democrats have campaigned nationwide for abortion rights in recent elections, retaking state legislatures and winning governorships, the party has run into trouble in Iowa, which not long ago was a battleground state for the presidency. In 2022, Gov. Reynolds won reelection in a landslide, Republicans captured the state’s congressional seats, and voters unseated the state’s attorney general and treasurer, both Democrats who ran. held office for decades.

President Biden has tried to make abortion a central campaign issue again this year, but Iowa is unlikely to be competitive at the presidential level in November. Former President Donald J. Trump won the state by significant margins in 2016 and 2020.

Sarah Corkery, a Democrat running for Congress in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, which a Republican won by 8 percentage points in 2022, said abortion was the most important issue in her campaign and that she believed it was a winning campaign for Iowa Democrats. But the state Supreme Court’s ruling, which came just hours after Biden’s debate performance sent Democrats into a frenzy, made for a sobering end to the week.

“We have two wake-up calls right now,” Ms. Corkery said. “We have to figure out the way forward for the presidency and the way forward in a state like ours, which has now effectively banned abortion. I never thought I would see this day, and yet here we are.”

Representative Ashley Hinson, Ms. Corkery’s Republican opponent, was not available for an interview, her campaign said Friday. In a statement, Ms. Hinson said the “decision is a victory for life and includes common sense exceptions that Iowans support.”

Other Democrats warned that Republicans, in Iowa and beyond, wanted to go further than a six-week ban. Rob Sand, Iowa’s auditor and the only Democrat still holding a statewide elective office, said “Republicans aren’t done yet” and are “going after contraception,” as well as surrogacy and in vitro fertilization.

As Republicans in Iowa celebrated the Supreme Court ruling, some also tried to counter criticism from Democrats. Ms. Reynolds invoked a declaration in favor of protecting in vitro fertilization, and Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley said officials “must build on the work we’ve already done to expand access to affordable child care, expand postpartum coverage on Medicaid and improve our foster care and adoption systems.”

The Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling largely focused on what standard of review should be applied to the new restrictions. The plaintiffs wanted the law tested based on whether it imposed an “unreasonable burden” on women seeking abortions, while attorneys for the state said they only had to prove that lawmakers had a “rational basis” in enacting the restrictions.

The majority of the four judges agreed with the state’s lawyers.

“Every ground the state identifies is a legitimate interest for the legislature to pursue, and the restrictions on abortion in the fetal heartbeat law are rationally related to promoting it,” Justice Matthew McDermott, who was appointed by Ms. Reynolds, wrote in the majority opinion.

In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Susan Christensen, also appointed by Reynolds, said that “the majority of the 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 support this decision,” the chief justice wrote. “The majority’s rigid approach relies heavily on the male-dominated history and traditions of the 19th century, while ignoring how far women’s rights have come since the Civil War era.”

Allison McCann And Amy Schoenfeld Walker reporting contributed.