Iowa’s near-total abortion ban is expected to go into effect on Friday, following the 4-3 Iowa Supreme Court decision on June 28 that overturned the temporary injunction halting the ban while the lawsuit filed by the Emma Goldman Clinic and Planned Parenthood North Central States is before the courts. The four-justice majority sent the case back to the District Court with instruction to dissolve the ban and use the “rational basis” standard to evaluate the ban. Rational basis is the lowest standard of legal review and almost any law can be upheld as constitutional under that standard.
Under Iowa’s rules of appellate procedure there is a 21-day period before an Iowa Supreme Court order such as the one dissolving the ban is acted on. Friday marks 21 days since the court’s decision, and the Gazette reports that Polk County District Judge Jeffery Farrell has scheduled an online meeting with parties in the ban case for 2 p.m. on Friday.
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, 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,” 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 new law specifically prohibits consideration of the mental health impact of the pregnancy.
Last week, the ACLU of Iowa, which represents the Emma Goldman Clinic and Planned Parenthood in their legal challenge of the ban, filed a petition with the Iowa Supreme Court requesting a rehearing on its June 28 decision.
“On rehearing, this Court should hold that the Iowa Constitution protects a fundamental right to bodily autonomy, which includes the right to make decisions about one’s pregnancy, that undue burden is the appropriate standard, and that the Ban is therefore unconstitutional,” the attorneys argue in the petition.
The three dissenting justices in the June 28 decision cited the majority’s failure to respect the bodily autonomy of pregnant Iowans as a central reason for keeping the injunction in place and using a higher standard of review — undue burden — than rational basis in assessing its constitutionality.
“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 Iowa Supreme Court seldom grants rehearings, and its 2023-24 session ended on June 28, making it even more unlikely it would act on the petition before the abortion ban goes into effect. The court typically begins a new session in September.
