Abortions will remain legal in Iowa until the 20-week mark after the state’s supreme court issued a deadlocked 3-3 decision Friday on whether Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds could reinstate a six-week abortion ban passed in 2018 but struck down by the courts.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks at a campaign event for Senate candidate Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) ... [+]
The law that would have banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in Iowa will remain permanently blocked after the court failed to reach a majority consensus on overturning a district court judge's initial ruling.
The stage was set for the 3-3 split after Justice Dana Oxley recused herself from the case.
Iowa's Supreme Court held its oral arguments on the case in April, where attorneys for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and the Emma Goldman Clinic urged justices to hold up the existing 20-week rule.
The so-called fetal heartbeat law was passed in Iowa in 2018, but a district judge struck it down the next year, holding that "a woman's right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy is a fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution." Since then, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that fundamental right to abortion is not guaranteed under the state constitution and after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1972 Roe V. Wade case protecting abortion access. By default, abortion will remain legal in Iowa until 20 weeks of pregnancy. The state has a mandatory 24-hour waiting period between a patient's initial appointment and the procedure.
Over the last 14 years, 18 cases before the Iowa Supreme Court have ended in a deadlock. In all of those cases, the court issued no opinions. "Why would we," Justice Thomas Waterman wrote in the decision issued Friday. In the abortion case, however, all six voting judges submitted opinions on the fetal heartbeat bill.
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