Starting next week, Iowa’s new abortion ban will prohibit almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in the state. Following a June 28 decision by a divided Iowa Supreme Court, the temporary injunction against enforcement of the law signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds in July 2023 will end at 8 a.m. on Monday, July 20. The law creates one of most restrictive abortion bans in the country.
“Today is a victory for life,” the governor said in a written statement on Tuesday, after a district court judge set the date for the injunction’s end. “There is nothing more sacred and no cause more worthy than protecting innocent unborn lives.”
As Chief Justice Susan Christensen noted in her dissent in the June 28 decision, “the only female lives that this statute treats with any meaningful regard and dignity are the unborn lives of female fetuses.”
According to the chief justice, the very limited exceptions included in the law to allow for an abortion after six weeks are “impractical.”
“Frankly, in many of these situations, they serve as another example of how this statute prioritizes the unborn over the living, placing pregnant women in grave harm in the process,” Christensen wrote.
One thing the new law won’t do is end the need for abortion services as a basic form of healthcare.
“We know a ban will not stop the need for abortions,” Leah Vanden Bosch of the Iowa Abortion Access Fund (IAAF) said in a news release on Wednesday.
IAAF has helped people across Iowa and on the Illinois side of the Quad Cities seeking abortion care cover the cost of clinic expenses since 1978.
“As one of the oldest abortion funds in the nation, we remain committed to providing abortion care for all Iowans,” Vanden Bosch said.
IAAF has a long-standing relationship with the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF), and is now partnering with CAF “to provide comprehensive, wraparound support to Iowans in need of abortion care.”
Since June 2022, when the Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a half-century of legal precedent and eliminated the federally recognized right to an abortion, 465 Iowans have contacted CAF for assistance, according to the nonprofit. Sixty of them did so in the last three weeks, after the Iowa Supreme Court issued its June 28 decision.
“This ruling in Iowa will continue to increase the number of people forced to travel for abortion care — both due to the devastating impacts of the ban as a whole, and due to the lack of guidance on exceptions and when doctors can act to provide emergency abortion care,” CAF Deputy Director Qudsiyyah Shariyf said in Wednesday’s news release. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to guarantee that all people have access to the abortion care they want, need, and deserve — regardless of who they are, their situation, or their zip code.”
Illinois has some of the strongest protections for abortion rights of any state. Abortion is legal up to the point of fetal viability (approximately 24-26 weeks), and there is no mandatory waiting period. One of the complications that Iowans face in addition to the new abortion ban is a medically unnecessary 24-hour waiting period that has been in place since 2022.
Illinois also has a shield law to protect abortion providers from investigation launched by other states. This may become increasingly important as Republican lawmakers around the country move from restricting abortion access in their own states to trying to prevent their citizens from accessing those services in other states.
CAF doesn’t just help pregnant people access care at health clinics, it also has a program to “streamline access to hospital-based abortion care” for those with complex medical needs. Last year, CAF helped over 360 people get the care they needed through this program.
Overall, “CAF received support requests from over 12,000 people from over 40 states” in 2023, the nonprofit said.
“If you are in need of support, please contact the Chicago Abortion Fund directly at (312) 663-0338,” IAAF said in a social media post. “Their intake form can be found at chicagoabortionfund.org/helpline.”
The Cedar Rapids-based nonprofit says it will “share more details about our plans to move forward once our team has had the opportunity to fully digest the ruling.”
“Please continue to stay engaged and support people who need abortion care,” IAAF’s Vanden Bosch said. “By working together, we will continue to take care of one another.”
Information on how to support IAAF is available on its site.
