Abortion Foes In Iowa, Other States Mount Roe V. Wade Challenges

DES MOINES, IA — An anti-abortion bill that would become one of the most restrictive in the country moved to floor debate in the Iowa Legislature as abortion foes shift their battleground to statehouses around the country. The so-called fetal heartbeat bill would ban most abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy — before, critics say, many women realize they are even pregnant.

The Iowa bill would ban most abortions, but allow them later in a pregnancy to save a woman’s life. A similar version has been introduced in the Iowa House. Both versions would subject doctors who knowingly perform abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected to prison sentences and fines of up to $7,500. Women who have abortions after the heartbeat is detected wouldn’t be held criminally liable under the legislation.

Another anti-abortion bill in Iowa, which last year banned most abortions after 20 weeks, would completely ban the procedure. It hasn’t been scheduled for debate, but is seen as a first strike to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states.

Iowa’s fetal heartbeat bill faces almost certain court challenges if passed and signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds, a staunchly pro-life Republican. The legislation is similar to bill passed last year by Ohio lawmakers, but vetoed by Republican Gov. John Kasich. Federal courts struck down similar laws in North Dakota and Arkansas.

The Iowa bills are among a flurry of anti-abortion bills introduced this year across the country as abortion foes line up against a woman’s right to abortion. They “are all tests designed to see how far government power to legislate on behalf of a fetus can reach,” Jessica Mason Pieklo, a senior legal analyst for Rewire, a website that promotes views supporting abortion rights, told The Washington Post.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland director of public affairs Erin Davison-Rippey said the Iowa bills are “intentionally unconstitutional, and they’re being introduced in order to challenge Roe v. Wade.”

“Politicians and special interest groups are weaponizing fetal heartbeat, which is by all accounts an arbitrary standard that bans abortion long before the point of fetal viability,” Davison-Rippey said in a statement. “These extreme attempts to ban abortion fly in the face of both medical and legal standards, as well as common sense and public opinion among Iowans, who overwhelmingly agree that abortion should remain safe and legal.”

Abortion foes were dealt a major setback in 2016 when the Supreme Court rejected a Texas law that held abortion clinics to hospital-like standards would have shuttered all but a handful. Proponents said it was intended to improve women’s health care, but the court said in a 5-3 decision “there was no significant health-related problem that the new law helped to cure” and the law posed “a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an ‘undue burden’ on their constitutional right to do so.”

Ingrid Duran, the National Right to Life Committee’s director of state legislation, told The Post state bills were drafted “with a bigger picture in mind.”

Among them:

The Mississippi House of Representatives voted earlier this month to ban abortions after 15 weeks, which would be the most restrictive abortion ban in the country, the Clarion Ledger reported. Mississippi already bans abortions 20 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period, except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or in cases of severe fetal abnormality.

Restrictive bills are back in Ohio this session. The state’s Senate has already passed legislation that would ban the most common type of abortion after 13 weeks and require the burial or cremation of fetal remains.

In the Utah House, lawmakers voted to send a bill to the Senate that would prevent doctors from performing abortions in cases where a fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome, despite warnings from attorneys that a court would rule it unconstitutional.

In South Carolina, lawmakers voted to delay a “personhood” bill that said life begins at conception and gives an embryo full citizenship rights because similarly worded bills have been struck down as unconstitutional. The bill, which would ban most abortions in the state, will likely be back after lawmakers consider exceptions that would allow the procedure to protect the life of the mother or underage rape victims.

Missouri lawmakers are considering banning abortion after 20 weeks. The Missouri Supreme Court last month heard arguments on a challenge to the state’s 72-hour wait period filed by the Satanic Temple on behalf of a woman who said it violated her religious beliefs. She argued she had been forced to view an ultrasound of her fetus and read an informed-consent pamphlet that said life begins at conception.

Court challenges have also been lodged in Texas and Arkansas, where appeals courts are considering the constitutionality of “dismemberment abortion” bans, and in Kansas, where lawmakers in 2015 passed a first-in-the nation law banning abortion that has been used as a model for abortion foes in other states, including Iowa. A ruling is expected soon.

President Trump called on Congress to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, would criminalize abortions after 20 weeks, except in cases or rape, incest or if the mother’s life was in danger. The bill was passed by the House in October, but failed to get the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate.

Proponents of such legislation cite studies that show a fetus experiences pain at 20 weeks, an assertion rejected by many credible sources, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which cites published research showing fetal brains don’t have “the biological capacity to perceive pain until at least 24 weeks gestation.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

(AP Photo/Morgan Lee: File)