The Iowa state legislature held a special session Tuesday before voting on a bill the same day that would ban most abortions at about six weeks pregnant, when most people don’t yet know. that they are pregnant. The state is the latest in the nation to vote on legislation restricting reproductive rights after the overturning of Roe v Wade last year, which ended the nation’s constitutional right to abortion.
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Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds called the special session last week, vowing to “continue to fight the inhumanity of abortion” and calling the “pro-life” movement against reproductive rights a ” the most important cause of human rights of our time”. . Lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Legislature will debate Bill 255, which was released Friday and aims to ban abortions at the first sign of heart activity, except in certain cases such as rape or incest.
Iowa’s house, senate, and governor’s office are all controlled by Republicans, and the bill faces few hurdles to pass.
Republicans in state legislatures across the country struck down reproductive rights after Roe’s end and banned or severely limited abortions in more than a dozen states. A number of these states, such as Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi, have passed total abortion bans with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. The bans, which powerful Christian conservative groups have backed, conflict with the views of the majority of Americans who, according to numerous polls, generally favor abortion access. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa survey from last year showed that about 61% of Iowans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Animated demonstrations and public audience
Before the Iowa Legislature debates the bill, lawmakers held a public hearing Tuesday that gave supporters and opponents of the legislation an opportunity to make brief statements. Each side had equal time, alternating between speakers for over two hours.
Several medical professionals have spoken out against the bill, warning that its passage would put patients at risk and prevent doctors from providing care. Other reproductive rights advocates have explained how the bill would disempower people and go against the will of the majority of Iowans.
“What a privileged life you lead if you can only see pregnancy as a blessing,” said Amy Bingaman, obstetrician and gynecologist. “You would be forcing a woman into a lifelong obligation that affects her education, her career, her family and her community.”
“Do you know the complexities and the nuances and the pain and the joy and the fear and all that comes with a womb and seeking basic health care? Do you?” Naya Thomas, a birth doula and employee of Planned Parenthood, told lawmakers.
A number of anti-abortion speakers supporting the legislation have come from Christian advocacy groups and framed their position as a human rights issue.
“We talk about women’s rights, but we don’t want to give those rights to girls in the womb,” said Maggie DeWitte, executive director of Pulse Life Advocates, an anti-abortion group that also states on its website that ” contraception kills babies”.
A Des Moines pastor who supported the legislation described how he stood in front of a family planning place once a week for seven years, and warned that “everyone in this room is going to stand before a holy god and account, and woe to him who says ‘I have arbitrarily chosen death’.” Another speaker in favor of the bill, who introduced himself as a medical student and president of his university’s Christian Medical Association , compared the denial of fetal rights to slavery and the Holocaust.
As the public hearing proceeded inside the chambers, a crowd of protesters from both sides held up signs and shouted slogans in the Capitol rotunda. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who had campaigned in Iowa, also arrived at the Capitol on Tuesday and was met anti-abortion protesters chanting “fascist” to him.
Demonstrators booed and shouted to Republican lawmakers after members of a subcommittee voted to push the bill to a general vote in the House.
“You kill women! a protester shouted, as state troopers escorted protesters away from the bedrooms.
A split court decision forces a vote
The Iowa bill is similar to a 2018 state law, then the most restrictive in the nation, that banned abortions at around six weeks. The Iowa Supreme Court later ruled the law unconstitutional in 2019 and barred it from going into effect. The court, however, ruled last year that abortion was not a constitutionally protected right in Iowa — a decision that opened the door for lawmakers to restrict reproductive rights in the state.
Tuesday’s special session comes after Reynolds failed in his bid to have the Iowa Supreme Court withdraw the injunction against his 2018 six-week abortion ban and allow it to be enforced. Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Waterman called the state’s attempt to enact the six-week abortion ban in 2018 “an unprecedented effort to judicially revive a law that has been declared unconstitutional,” and in his view last month referenced a previous ruling that made it illegal for police. search a suspect’s trash without a warrant.
“It would be ironic and disturbing if our court became the first state supreme court in the nation to rule that trash placed in a trash can for collection is entitled to more constitutional protection than a woman’s interest in self-reliance. and dominion over one’s own body. “Wrote Waterman.
The court was split 3-3 in its ruling last month on reinstating the 2018 bill, leading to a stalemate, meaning a lower court ruling blocking the ban stood. .