In a 4-3 decision, Iowa's Supreme Court upheld a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy on Friday, meaning the law will replace current rules allowing abortions up to 22 weeks. Many women don't know they're pregnant at six weeks. After that point, women in Iowa can only get abortions in cases of rape reported to law enforcement within 45 days, cases of incest reported within 140 days, and in cases where the fetus has life-threatening abnormalities or the life of the mother is threatened, reports NPR. That's despite a 2023 poll finding 61% of adults in the state believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases, per the New York Times.
State Republicans have been trying for years to enact such restrictions. Last year, the state Supreme Court deadlocked on a similar law, passed in 2018, that also sought a six-week abortion ban, leaving a lower court injunction in place. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the new law last July but it was swiftly blocked by a lower court in a challenge brought by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. This time around, the state Supreme Court—made up of seven justices appointed by Republican governors—found there was a "rational basis" to the six-week ban owing to the detection of a cardiac pulse, or what the justices called a "fetal heartbeat," around that time.
This "is rationally related to the state's legitimate interest in protecting unborn life," reads the majority opinion written by Justice Matthew McDermott. In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Susan Christensen wrote "the majority's rigid approach relies heavily on the male-dominated history and traditions of the 1800s, all the while ignoring how far women's rights have come since the Civil War era." Attorneys for Planned Parenthood argued that even women who know they are pregnant at six weeks will face "substantial logistical and financial obstacles in arranging to have an abortion in Iowa before their time runs out," per CNN. (More abortion stories.)
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