Iowa Legislature to reconvene for special session on abortion bill

Gov. Kim Reynolds will convene the Iowa Legislature this week for a special session to enact an abortion bill, a process that Iowa House Rep. Jon Dunwell, R-Newton, assumes will last only one day and could effectively re-introduce Iowa Code Chapter 146C, commonly referred to as the Fetal Heartbeat Law.

Lawmakers will meet at the capitol at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 11. Presumably, there will be committee meetings and a public hearing before a bill officially gets through a committee and presented to the House and Senate for a vote.

Dunwell told Newton News in a phone interview on July 6 that he has not seen any of the language of the proposal, but he assumes the final draft would be almost exact to what was passed five years ago. If so, that would mean abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy — the law currently in place — would no longer would legal.

“The production of 146C that came out in 2018 — that’s going to be, I think, re-introduced again — is a product of a very diverse group of people coming together and trying to figure out where we can save as many babies as possible in the shortest period of time,” Dunwell said.

Republicans have the majority in both the Iowa House of Representatives and the Iowa Senate. This past session showed the party is unified enough to pass just about any bill it or Reynolds wants. Jasper County Democratic Party Chair Alex Cleverley said the special session is “just another power grab” by the Republcian Party and the governor.

“It’s unfair to be attacking women and going after their rights,” she added, citing a March poll that concluded 61 percent of Iowans say abortion should be legal. “I wish there was more detail and information out about (the special session). But it sounds like what they’re going to do is go in and strip abortion rights for Iowans.”

FETAL HEARTBEAT LAW COULD MAKE ITS RETURN

Signed into law in 2018, the Fetal Heartbeat Law prohibited women from having abortions if a heartbeat was detectable. Typically, a fetal heartbeat — or what medical expects say is more of an embryonic flutter — can be discovered via ultrasound as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

According to the law’s language, a physician shall perform an abdominal ultrasound when searching for a heartbeat, which might not be detectable at the six-week mark using this method. It is also important to note that the fetal/fetus stage of development is not until the ninth or 11th week.

The law also granted leniency in cases of a medical emergency or when the procedure is medically necessary.

However, an injunction was placed on the law by a district judge based on past court decisions that affirmed abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, but this was later reversed when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Reynolds later requested the court to dissolve the injunction, but she was told no.

Eventually this led to a deadlock 3-3 vote by the Iowa Supreme Court, keeping the district court’s injunction intact. Which has now led to this special session. In a statement, she said the court’s “lack of action disregards the will of Iowa voters and lawmakers who will not rest until the unborn are protected by law.”

ABORTION LEGISLATION DID NOT MOVE FORWARD LAST SESSION

Between the litigations surrounding the state’s Fetal Heartbeat Law and wanting to wait on a decision from the Iowa Supreme Court, Dunwell said lawmakers held off on pushing any potential bills relating to abortions this past legislative session, including one that he authored with 19 other representatives.

House File 510, or the Iowa Human Life Protection Act, designates that human beings, including the unborn, are endowed certain unalienable rights, with the foremost being the right to life. It also claims “abortion is a murderous act of violence that purposefully and knowingly terminates a human life in a womb.”

The bill would have effectively outright banned abortion in Iowa.

“We didn’t want to add any fuel to the fire,” Dunwell said. “Even though we prepared the legislation, worked through it, we felt like at this point it wasn’t worth pushing it until we allowed the courts to speak. The courts (Iowa Supreme Court) did speak, but it was a non-decision. So we didn’t get the clarity in the decision.”

It will be lawmakers who will have to provide clarity when it comes to any potential legislation that comes forward from this special session. In addition to addressing the issue of many women not knowing they are pregnant at six weeks, there are also waiting periods that could be problematic.

In Iowa, the law requires patients make two appointments 24 hours apart from each other before an abortion can be administered. Patients who are obese or have a retroverted uteri may also have complications when detecting a pregnancy early enough.