Bans Off Our Bodies protesters gather in the rotunda of the State Capitol Building to protest a special session of the Iowa Legislature called for the sole purpose of passing a six-week abortion ban, June 11, 2023. — Courtney Guein/Little Village

By Iowa Sen. Janice Weiner, representing District 45

This is our time, Iowa. Here in Iowa, we don’t have the right to have a
popular referendum on the ballot, as they do in neighboring Missouri and
Nebraska — where abortion is literally on the ballot.

But we know what’s at stake in this election.

The rallying cry at Harris-Walz rallies of “we won’t go back” speaks
volumes. It speaks to all who remember a time before Roe, when too many
women died. It speaks to those who fought for so many rights — I
remember when my parents reorganized their credit cards and bank
accounts, so my mom could have accounts in her name, finally, with the
security that entailed. And it reverberates for those of us who had those
rights for most of our adult lives — only to watch them be declared “not
fundamental after all” and ripped away from our children’s and
grandchildren’s generations.

No, we are not going back. We are going to move Iowa — and this country —
forward.

So Iowa, abortion may not literally be on the ballot here. The entire ballot is
a referendum on abortion.

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