Iowa Supreme Court Allows Six-Week Abortion Ban to Take Effect

Republican lawmakers passed the restrictions last year, but a lower court blocked enforcement of the law.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the state’s six-week abortion ban could be enforced, a decision that sharply limits access to the procedure and fulfills a longstanding aim of the state’s Republican leaders.

The 4-to-3 ruling vastly limited the time frame for legal abortions in Iowa — the previous standard was 22 weeks — and meant that many women may travel to nearby states like Illinois or Minnesota to undergo the procedure. For Iowa Republicans, the decision marked the realization of a long-held policy goal and vindication after previous setbacks in the courts. For Democrats, it was a painful reminder of how much political ground they have lost in Iowa and, they hoped, an election-year warning to voters across the country that Republicans would continue trying to limit abortion in places where they win power.

“There is no right more sacred than life, and nothing more worthy of our strongest defense than the innocent unborn,” Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said in a statement, adding that “I’m glad that the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld the will of the people of Iowa.”

Pam Jochum, the State Senate’s Democratic leader, called it “a tragic day in Iowa history.”

“This despicable and dangerous ruling cannot be the last word on reproductive rights and personal freedom in Iowa,” she said in a statement. “Activist judges and anti-choice Republicans cannot be allowed to control Iowans’ lives.”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion in 2022, state legislatures and courts have become central battlegrounds on the issue. Many conservative states, largely in the South and Midwest, have moved to ban or sharply limit the procedure, while other states have passed new abortion protections.

In Iowa, Republican lawmakers, who dominate the State Legislature, tried twice to enact a six-week ban. The State Supreme Court, which is made up of Republican appointees, deadlocked last year on whether the first law, passed in 2018, should be enforced, leaving a lower court’s injunction in place.

Ms. Reynolds responded by calling a special session, in which Republicans swiftly passed another six-week ban over the objections of Democrats and abortion-rights supporters. A state district court had blocked enforcement while the new law was being challenged, which meant that women in the state could continue to seek abortions up until about 22 weeks of pregnancy.

“Frankly, I think there are some Iowans who just thought, ‘We keep getting saved by the courts,’ or, ‘It’s theoretical, it’s not real,’” said Jennifer Konfrst, the top Democrat in the Iowa House of Representatives. “But unfortunately, here we are, and the consequences will be devastating.”

The State Supreme Court ruling on Friday reversed the temporary injunction and sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings. Advocates on both sides of the issue said they expected abortion to remain legal beyond six weeks for at least several more days while the district court prepared to put the Supreme Court’s order into effect.

Abortion remains legal in some states bordering Iowa, including Illinois and Minnesota. Other nearby states, including Missouri and South Dakota, have banned abortion in almost all circumstances. The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, said Iowa has five abortion clinics and estimated that clinicians performed about 4,200 abortions in the state last year.

The 2023 Iowa law that became the focus of a legal challenge allowed for abortions until the point where there was what the legislation called “detectable fetal heartbeat,” a term that medical groups dispute. The law assumed that this was roughly six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. Florida, Georgia and South Carolina also ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

The Iowa legislation included exceptions for rape or incest, when the woman’s life was in serious danger or she faced a risk of certain permanent injuries, or when fetal abnormalities “incompatible with life” were present.

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

But as Democrats nationally have run on abortion rights in recent elections, retaking state legislative chambers and holding governorships, the party has floundered in Iowa, which not so long ago was a presidential battleground state. In 2022, Governor Reynolds overwhelmingly won re-election, Republicans swept the state’s congressional seats and voters unseated the attorney general and treasurer, both Democrats who had held office for decades.

President Biden, who called the Iowa restrictions “extreme and dangerous,” has sought to make abortion a central campaign issue again this year. Former President Donald J. Trump carried Iowa by significant margins in 2016 and 2020, and is widely expected to win the state again this year.

Sarah Corkery, a Democrat running for Congress in Iowa’s Second Congressional District, which a Republican carried by 8 percentage points in 2022, said abortion was the top issue in her campaign and that she believed it was a winning one for Iowa Democrats. But the State Supreme Court ruling, which came just hours after Mr. Biden’s debate performance touched off panic among Democrats, made for a sobering end to the week.

“We now have two wake-up calls,” Ms. Corkery said. “We have to figure out the path forward for the presidency and the path forward in a state like ours, which essentially now has banned abortion. I never thought I would live to see this day, and yet, here we are.”

Representative Ashley Hinson, Ms. Corkery’s Republican opponent, was not available for an interview, her campaign said on Friday. In a statement, Ms. Hinson said the “decision is a victory for life, and includes common-sense exceptions that Iowans support.”

Other Democrats cautioned that Republicans, in Iowa and beyond, wanted to go further than a six-week ban. Rob Sand, the Iowa auditor and the only Democrat still holding statewide elective office, said “Republicans are not finished” and “are coming after contraception,” as well as surrogacy and in vitro fertilization.

As Iowa Republicans celebrated the Supreme Court ruling, some also sought to head off Democrats’ criticisms. Ms. Reynolds called in a statement for protecting in vitro fertilization, and Pat Grassley, the speaker of the Iowa House, said officials “must build on the work we’ve already done to expand access to affordable child care, extend postpartum coverage on Medicaid and improve our foster care and adoption systems.”

The Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling focused largely on a question of which standard of review to apply to the new restrictions. The plaintiffs wanted the law tested based on whether it posed an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions, while lawyers for the state said they only had to prove that lawmakers had a “rational basis” in enacting the restrictions.

The four-justice majority agreed with the state’s lawyers.

“Every ground the state identifies is a legitimate interest for the legislature to pursue, and the restrictions on abortion in the fetal heartbeat statute are rationally related to advancing them,” Justice Matthew McDermott, who was appointed by Ms. Reynolds, wrote in the majority opinion.

In a dissent, Chief Justice Susan Christensen, also a Reynolds appointee, said the “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.”

“I cannot stand by this decision,” the chief justice wrote. “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.”

Allison McCann and Amy Schoenfeld Walker contributed reporting.