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Abortion is legal again in Iowa, after a Polk County District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the state from enforcing the severe abortion ban Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law on Friday afternoon. Judge Joseph Seidlin issued his order Monday afternoon in response to a legal challenge brought by the ACLU of Iowa on behalf of the Emma Goldman Clinic, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (PPH) and Dr. Sarah Trexler, PPH’s medical director.
“We are deeply relieved that the court granted this relief so essential health care in Iowa can continue,” Dr. Abbey Hardy-Fairbanks, medical director of the Emma Goldman Clinic, said in a written statement after the temporary injunction was issued. “We are also acutely aware that the relief is only pending further litigation and the future of abortion in Iowa remains tenuous and threatened.”
The ACLU of Iowa had filed its petition seeking the temporary injunction even before Reynolds signed HF 732 into law on Friday afternoon, in hopes of blocking the law from taking effect. Although the hearing on the injunction took place at the same time the governor was signing the bill at the meeting of rightwing evangelical political activists, Judge Seidlin said he would not issue a ruling that afternoon.
“I can’t think of anything that would be more insulting to either side for a judge — who, before Wednesday at 11 o’clock, had no idea that he was going to be involved in any of this — to listen to arguments and then rule from the bench … so flippantly without giving it any thought,” the judge said.
Because of that, almost all abortions were illegal in Iowa from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon for the first time in 50 years.
The new abortion ban is almost identical to a 2018 law the Iowa Supreme Court ruled violated rights guaranteed by the Iowa Constitution. It makes abortion illegal once an ultrasound probe can detect any cardiac activity in an embryo, which typically occurs around six weeks of pregnancy before most people even know they are pregnant. There are narrow and burdensome exemptions for victims of rape and incest, as well as exemptions for cases where the embryo or fetus has a condition “incompatible with life,” the life of the patient is in immediate danger, or continuing the pregnancy would pose a “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” for the patient.
The Iowa Board of Medicine is supposed to create rules to govern the conduct of doctors under the new law, but lawmakers didn’t allow any time for rules to be considered or created before the law went into effect. The one part of new law Judge Seidlin did not enjoin on Monday was the board’s rule-making process.
Seidlin said he based his decision to enjoin enforcement of the law while the challenge brought abortion providers is before the courts was made on the basis that they were likely to succeed. In its most recent ruling on the right to abortion, the Iowa Supreme Court said last June that any restriction must not impose an “undue burden” on a patient seeking the procedure. During the hearing on Friday, attorneys for the state conceded the new ban cannot pass the undue burden test. They argued that the judge should use the lesser “rational basis” test for the law, which almost any law can pass.
“This court does not get to declare that our Supreme Court got it wrong and then impose a different standard,” Seidlin wrote in his ruling. “Such would be an alarming exercise of judicial activism.”
In a written statement on Monday afternoon, Gov. Reynolds denounced the temporary injunction, calling it part of “[t]he abortion industry’s attempt to thwart the will of Iowans.” Polling has consistently shown that a large majority of Iowans favor abortion rights. The last Iowa Poll on the topic found 61 percent of respondents felt abortion should be legal in most or all cases.
The governor said she “will fight this all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court.” Unlike the district court, the high court could change the standard of review for abortion restriction, lowering it to the rational basis test. Three justices have already indicated they may be willing to lower the standard. If a majority agrees, the six-week abortion ban would take effect again. The governor, however, has not yet announced any plan to appeal the temporary injunction to the Iowa Supreme Court.
The Emma Goldman Clinic and Planned Parenthood have resumed providing abortion care to their patients. During a news conference on Monday afternoon, PPNCS CEO and President Ruth Ricahardson said Planned Parenthood’s clinics in Iowa had worked late into Thursday night to serve their patients’ needs. Clinic staff made “hundreds of phone calls … preparing patients for the unexpected,” she said.
“While we know that the state may seek an appeal,” Richardson said, “we are proud to resume services for our patients and provide patient outreach to help break through the state of manufactured chaos that is the new normal.”
