Iowa Republicans Move to Sharply Limit Abortion

DES MOINES, Iowa — Less than a month after a deadlocked Iowa Supreme Court left a six-week abortion ban unenforceable, lawmakers returned to the state Capitol on Tuesday and passed a nearly identical set of restrictions on the procedure.

Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican who said, “I believe the pro-life movement is the most important human rights cause of our time” when she called the special session on abortion, plans to sign the bill into law Friday, her office said.

“The voices of Iowans and their democratically elected representatives cannot be ignored any longer, and justice for the unborn should not be delayed,” Reynolds said in a statement Tuesday night.

The session further cemented Iowa’s sharp political shift to the right, and was set to end its increasingly rare status as a Republican-led state where abortions are allowed up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. The new limits would add Iowa to a list of conservative states including Indiana, North Dakota and South Carolina that have passed abortion restrictions since the U.S. Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion last year.

Iowans on both sides of the abortion debate gathered at the Capitol in Des Moines on Tuesday, holding signs with messages such as “My Body, My Choice” and wearing T-shirts with slogans such as “Unborn Lives Matter.” Every seat was claimed inside a public hearing before a House committee, with scores of others standing in the hallways and chanting “Abortion bans have got to go.”

The call for a special session infuriated but did not surprise Iowa Democrats, who celebrated the court’s deadlock a few weeks ago but knew that Republicans, who control both chambers of the Legislature, were likely to try again.

The Iowa Supreme Court’s deadlock left in place a lower court’s injunction that blocked enforcement of a six-week ban, but it also left unsettled the broader question of whether such restrictions are permissible under the state’s constitution. Supporters of abortion rights said the new limits passed by lawmakers endangered women’s health and ran counter to public opinion.

“They have overplayed their hand,” Sen. Pam Jochum, the leader of the Democratic minority, said in an interview at the Capitol on Tuesday. But while members of her caucus fought the measure, Jochum said the large Republican margins limited their options.

The bill passed by Republicans allows for abortions up to about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. The bill includes exceptions after that point for rape or incest, when the woman’s life is in serious danger or she faces a risk of certain permanent injuries, or when fetal abnormalities “incompatible with life” are present.

In public testimony Tuesday, supporters and opponents of the legislation told wrenching personal stories and described how religious beliefs shaped their views on abortion.

The Rev. Katie Styrt, a Presbyterian pastor from Davenport, described seeking an abortion several years ago when she was pregnant with twins, one of whom was found to have severe complications and would not be able to survive. She told lawmakers she had hoped to save the other twin by getting the abortion.

“We had the health care and the doctors we needed to get us where we needed to be,” Styrt said. “Now, if this bill passes, we won’t.”

Others said passing the restrictions was a moral imperative.

“I understand both sides: I was a woman who exercised choice to have an abortion — this is why I advocate to prevent other women experiencing what I have gone through,” Kristi Judkins, the executive director of Iowa Right to Life, told legislators. “People have labeled me a hypocrite, but I ask you, Who here would tell someone to make the same negative, permanent, life-changing mistake?”

Sweeping restrictions on abortion in Iowa would further erode access to the procedure in the Midwest, where it is already limited in many states. But a new law would almost certainly face a fresh legal challenge, and the outcome in the courts would again be uncertain.

Abortion is banned in almost all cases in the bordering states of Missouri, South Dakota and Wisconsin, and a new 12-week ban recently passed in Nebraska. Illinois and Minnesota, which are led by Democrats, have permissive abortion laws and could become destinations for Iowa women seeking abortions. More than 3,700 abortions were performed in Iowa in 2021, according to state data, most of them by medication.

The new limits passed Tuesday after hours of intense debate that extended well into the evening.

“If this bill becomes law, women will die in Iowa,” state Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, a Democrat, told her colleagues. “Common sense has walked out the door.”

Republicans defended the bill, and voted down several amendments from Democrats that would have expanded exceptions.

“Unborn people, in my opinion, are babies, and government’s job is to protect the rights of every person, including babies,” state Rep. Brad Sherman, a Republican, said on the House floor.

A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll from this year found that 61% of adults in the state believed abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while 35% believed it should be illegal in most or all cases.

But last year, when Democrats nationally ran on abortion rights, retaking state legislative chambers and holding governorships, the party floundered in Iowa, which not so long ago was viewed as a state where voters might swing to either party. Reynolds won reelection in a landslide, Republicans swept the state’s congressional seats and voters unseated the attorney general and treasurer, both Democrats who had held office for decades.

Although Iowans voted twice for Barack Obama, and Democrats held a majority in the state Senate as recently as 2016, the state is now solidly Republican. Only one Democrat, Auditor Rob Sand, still holds statewide office, and the national Democratic Party has moved to push Iowa’s coveted first-in-the-nation caucuses later in the nominating calendar.

Republicans, for their part, have wasted no time remaking Iowa in a more conservative image. Reynolds signed laws this year that banned hormone therapy for transgender children, loosened child labor rules and limited Sand’s power. And with Republicans keeping Iowa at the start of their nominating calendar, the party’s presidential hopefuls have been flooding the state.

State Rep. Jennifer Konfrst, leader of the Democratic minority in the Iowa House, said the state was not as conservative as recent election results suggested. Although Democrats are not likely to retake a legislative chamber next year, she said they saw an opportunity to expand their statehouse numbers in 2024 and regain a foothold in the congressional delegation. New abortion limits, she said, would have the potential to mobilize Democratic voters who sat out the last election.

“Our best case is going to be to hold Republicans accountable for going against what Iowans want,” said Konfrst, who represents parts of suburban Des Moines. “The fact that they’re hurrying it through in July, a year before an election, shows that politically they know this is unpopular.”

But Iowa Republicans have made no efforts to hide their support for abortion restrictions, and they have kept winning elections anyway. Matt Windschitl, the majority leader in the House, said, “Iowans have elected us on the promise to defend the unborn, and we will continue to follow through on that promise.”

The same poll that showed broad support for abortion rights this year also showed that more Iowans approved than disapproved of how the state Legislature was doing its job. And nearly two-thirds of those surveyed disapproved of President Joe Biden’s job performance.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/us/iowa-republicans-special-session.html">The New York Times</a>.