Update (Tuesday, July 23, 2024): Iowa’s new near-total abortion ban will go into effect on Monday, following the Iowa Supreme Court’s rejection of a rehearing request on its latest decision on reproductive rights. In an order issued Tuesday morning, Polk County District Court Judge Jerry Farrell wrote “the temporary injunction shall be deemed dissolved effective 8:00 a.m. on Monday, July 29, 2024, and the law may be fully enforced.”
On Monday afternoon, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected the request for a rehearing of its June 28 decision overturning a temporary injunction against the near-total abortion ban Gov. Reynolds signed into law in July 2023.
“After consideration by this court, the petition for rehearing in the above-captioned case is hereby overruled and denied,” the order signed by Chief Justice Susan Christensen said.
Christensen was one the three dissenting justices in the June 28 decision. The chief justice wrote a sharp dissent, criticizing the decision of the four-justice majority that all but eliminated any protection for the right to end a pregnancy under the Iowa Constitution.
“Today, our court’s majority strips Iowa women of their bodily autonomy by holding that there is no fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy under our state constitution,” Chief Justice Susan Christensen wrote in her dissent, which was joined by Justice Edward Mansfield and Justice Thomas Waterman. “I cannot stand by this decision. 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. It is a bold assumption to think that the drafters of our state constitution intended for their interpretation to stand still while we move forward as a society.”
The earliest the court’s decision instructing a district court judge to dissolve the temporary injunction could have gone into effect was Friday. But on July 11, the ACLU of Iowa petitioned the Iowa Supreme Court for a rehearing on behalf of the Emma Goldman Clinic, Planned Parenthood of Heartland and its medical director, Dr. Sarah Traxler. The court seldom grants rehearings, but the district court judge could not act until the justices resolved the issue. Monday’s decision clears the way for the injunction to be dissolved, and one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country to go into effect.
The bill creating the ban passed with only Republican votes last year during a one-day special session of the Iowa Legislature called by Gov. Kim Reynolds. It prohibits almost all abortions after a mandatory ultrasound probe of a pregnant patient can detect any cardiac activity. That typically happens six weeks into a pregnancy, before many people even realize they are pregnant.
The governor and other proponents of the ban call it the “fetal heartbeat” law, but key parts of that label are factually incorrect. At six weeks the embryo has not yet become a fetus and the heart has not formed.
There are narrow and burdensome exceptions for rape and incest victims, as well as exemptions for cases where the embryo or fetus has a condition “incompatible with life,” if the patient is in immediate danger, or if continuing the pregnancy would pose a “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” for the patient. The new law specifically prohibits consideration of the mental health impact of the pregnancy.
The court’s June 28 decision not only ordered the dissolution of the injunction, it sent the challenge to the new law by Emma Goldman and Planned Parenthood back to the district court with instructions for the judge to use the least stringent level of judicial review, the rational basis test. Under the rational basis test, almost any law can be upheld as constitutional. Emma Goldman and Planned Parenthood argued that since this is an important right involving the most basic issues of bodily autonomy, the law should be judged under the higher “undue burden” statute, which was in place at the time the injunction was issued last year. Under the undue burden standard, the new abortion ban was clearly unconstitutional.
During an online meeting with the parties in the case on Friday afternoon, Polk County District Court Judge Jeffery Farrell said he was inclined to give several days of advance notice before he dissolves the injunction and allows the new abortion ban to go into effect. The judge had not announced a timeline as of the end of day on Monday.
According to Ruth Richardson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, which includes Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and covers Iowa, approximately 97 percent of the abortions currently performed in Iowa will become illegal once the ban goes into effect.
