Abortion in Iowa
History and legality of fetal abortion in the state / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Abortion in Iowa is legal up to 20 weeks of gestation. A 6-week abortion ban has been indefinitely blocked in court.[1]
Over recent decades, the number of abortion clinics in Iowa has generally decreased, and state legislators have regularly introduced bills to severely restrict abortion. Public opinion in Iowa remains about evenly split on whether abortion should be legal.
In 2017, Iowa rejected millions of dollars in federal funding for Medicaid as part of their efforts to try to defund Planned Parenthood and its abortion services in the state. In 2020, it was reported that abortions in Iowa went up for the first time in decades—25 percent—with the loss of that federal aid attributed to the increase.[2]
In 2018, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc., Jill Meadows, M.D., and Emma Goldman Clinic (petitioners) filed a lawsuit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in state court, arguing the early abortion ban violated the Iowa State Constitution. Courts supported their injunction request, saying the law violated the state's constitution.[3] A #StoptheBans protest occurred at the Statehouse in Des Moines on May 21, 2019.
In February 2020, the State Senate passed a constitutional amendment clarifying that there is no right to an abortion in the Iowa constitution. The amendment must pass the House, the legislature again in 2022, and a statewide vote before it becomes law.[4] The statewide vote would happen in 2024 at the earliest.[5]
In June 2023, the Iowa Supreme Court issued a split decision (3–3) regarding a proposed 6-week abortion ban, meaning that the decision of a lower court not to enforce the ban was upheld; abortion remains legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks.[6]