Current:Home > BackIowa leaders want its halted abortion law to go into effect. The state’s high court will rule Friday-LoTradeCoin
Iowa leaders want its halted abortion law to go into effect. The state’s high court will rule Friday
View Date:2024-12-24 00:09:27
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court is expected to weigh in Friday on the state’s temporarily blocked abortion law, which prohibits abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant.
With the law on hold, abortion is legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. On Friday, the justices could uphold or reject a lower court ruling that temporarily blocked enforcement of the law, with or without offering comments on whether the law itself is constitutional. Both supporters of the law and the abortion providers opposed to it were preparing for the various possibilities.
The high court’s highly anticipated ruling will be the latest in an already yearslong legal battle over abortion restrictions in the state that escalated when the Iowa Supreme Court and then the U.S. Supreme Court both overturned decisions establishing a constitutional right to abortion.
Most Republican-led states across the country have limited abortion access since 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Currently, 14 states have near-total bans at all stages of pregnancy, and three ban abortions at about six weeks.
The Iowa law passed with exclusively Republican support in a one-day special session last July. A legal challenge was filed the next day by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic.
The law was in effect for a few days before a district court judge put it on pause, a decision Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds appealed.
Iowa’s high court has not yet resolved whether earlier rulings that applied an “undue burden test” for abortion laws should remain in effect. The undue burden test is an intermediate level of analysis that questions whether laws create too significant an obstacle to abortion.
The state argued the law should be analyzed using rational basis review, the least strict approach to judging legal challenges, and the court should simply weigh whether the government has a legitimate interest in restricting the procedure.
Representing the state during oral arguments in April, attorney Eric Wessan said that the bench already indicated what’s appropriate in this case when they ruled that there’s no “fundamental right” to abortion in the state constitution.
“This court has never before recognized a quasi-fundamental or a fundamental-ish right,” he said.
But Peter Im, an attorney for Planned Parenthood, told the justices there are core constitutional rights at stake that merit the court’s consideration of whether there is too heavy a burden on people seeking abortion access.
“It is emphatically this court’s role and duty to say how the Iowa Constitution protects individual rights, how it protects bodily autonomy, how it protects Iowans’ rights to exercise dominion over their own bodies,” he said.
veryGood! (178)
Related
- US inflation may have picked up in October after months of easing
- Chiefs players comfort frightened children during Super Bowl parade mass shooting
- Pregnant woman found dead in Indiana in 1992 identified through forensic genealogy
- After getting 'sand kicked in face,' Yankees ready for reboot: 'Hellbent' on World Series
- Craig Melvin replacing Hoda Kotb as 'Today' show co-anchor with Savannah Guthrie
- Montana’s Malmstrom air base put on lockdown after active shooter report
- Israel launches series of strikes in Lebanon as tension with Iran-backed Hezbollah soars
- Delta flight with maggots on plane forced to turn around
- Who is Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman Donald Trump picked to serve as attorney general?
- NYC man caught at border with Burmese pythons in his pants is sentenced, fined
Ranking
- The Surreal Life’s Kim Zolciak Fuels Dating Rumors With Costar Chet Hanks After Kroy Biermann Split
- The Truth About Vanderpump Rules' It's Not About the Pasta Conspiracy Revealed
- Angelia Jolie’s Ex-Husband Jonny Lee Miller Says He Once Jumped Out of a Plane to Impress Her
- Vanessa Hudgens spills on working out, winding down and waking up (including this must-have)
- 'Dangerous and unsanitary' conditions at Georgia jail violate Constitution, feds say
- Utah school board seeks resignation of member who questioned athlete’s gender
- Reduce, reuse, redirect outrage: How plastic makers used recycling as a fig leaf
- Top takeaways from Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis' forceful testimony in contentious hearing on whether she should be removed from Trump Georgia 2020 election case
Recommendation
-
Horoscopes Today, November 9, 2024
-
North Carolina lawmakers say video gambling machine legislation could resurface this year
-
Detroit Pistons' Isaiah Stewart arrested for allegedly punching Phoenix Suns' Drew Eubanks before game
-
A fin whale decomposing on an Oregon beach creates a sad but ‘super educational’ spectacle
-
Martin Scorsese on faith in filmmaking, ‘The Saints’ and what his next movie might be
-
After searing inflation, American workers are getting ahead, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says
-
Driver who injured 9 in a California sidewalk crash guilty of hit-and-run but not DUI
-
These Super Flattering Madewell Pants Keep Selling Out & Now They’re on Sale