Abortion in Iowa will remain legal until roughly 20 weeks of pregnancy after a deadlock on the state’s Supreme Court over whether to grant a request by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) to reinstate a 2018 law that would have banned the procedure in most cases after six weeks.
With the split decision, announced Friday, a lower-court ruling that the state’s “fetal heartbeat law” is unconstitutional remains in effect.
Iowa is among a wave of Republican-led states that have sought to significantly curtail abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.
Separately Friday in Ohio, a divided state Supreme Court ruled that an election can be held in August on a GOP-driven ballot measure that, if passed, would make it more difficult to amend the state constitution. Democrats have argued that it is an attempt to quash voter efforts to enshrine abortion rights into state law.
In Iowa, the state’s high court deadlocked over the unusual process state leaders were taking to restrict abortion rights.
Reynolds signed the law five years ago. It has remained blocked by a 2019 district court ruling, but last year Reynolds asked the Supreme Court to take another look, given developments on abortion nationally and in the state.
In an opinion signed by the three justices opposing the move, Justice Thomas D. Waterman wrote that Reynolds was asking the court to “do something that has never happened in Iowa history.”
“In our view, it is legislating from the bench to take a statute that was moribund when it was enacted and has been enjoined for four years and then to put it into effect,” he wrote.
Waterman noted that state officials did not appeal the injunction blocking the law at the time it was announced.
The state’s high court has seven members, but one was recused from the case, creating the prospect of a tie.
Critics of Iowa’s 2018 law and others like it say it largely bans abortion because women often do not know they are pregnant when the restrictions take effect.
In a statement Friday, Reynolds harshly criticized the “lack of action by the Iowa Supreme Court” and vowed that “the fight is not over.”
She castigated the state’s high court for having “sided with a single judge in a single county who struck down Iowa’s legislation based on principles that now have been flat-out rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Republican legislative leaders vowed to pass new legislation with abortion restrictions.
“We feel strongly that the Heartbeat Bill is a good piece of legislation that would save the innocent lives of unborn children,” House Speaker Pat Grassley (R) said in a statement. “Going forward we will work together to pass legislation that will protect life, support new mothers, and promote strong families in Iowa.”
Meanwhile, Democrats in the state applauded the deadlock.
“I am thrilled that the Iowa Supreme Court will not stand in the way of Iowans who need abortion care, especially when our friends and neighbors already have to navigate so many barriers to health care,” Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Rita Hart said. “I know this is not the end of the discussion, but I am glad that for today, Iowans can breathe a sigh of relief that their right to make their own health-care decisions is protected under the law.”
In Ohio, the high court permitted an Aug. 8 election on State Issue 1, which seeks to raise the threshold required to amend the state’s constitution to 60 percent of the vote. A ballot initiative now only has to pass with a simple majority. The proposal also would impose more-stringent requirements on how signatures are gathered for ballot initiative campaigns.
The debate over the measure has become a proxy battle in recent months between Ohio Republicans, who control the state legislature, and Democrats who have argued that it is an attempt to make it more difficult to add abortion protections in the constitution.
An advocacy group sued Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) in a bid to block the election, arguing that it had been scheduled in violation of state election law. The high court voted 4-3 to let the election proceed.
In a separate ruling earlier this week, the court ordered the Ohio Ballot Board to rewrite what justices said was inaccurate and misleading language in the ballot measure.
The five-member board, chaired by LaRose, subsequently met to revise the language.
Ohio is among several states where lawmakers have been seeking to make it more difficult to pass citizen-led initiatives after liberal policies — from protecting abortion rights to expanding Medicaid to raising the minimum wage — won at the ballot box across the country. Efforts to raise the bar to amend state constitutions have cropped up during legislative sessions in recent years.
If such efforts prevail, it could throw a wrench into one of abortion rights groups’ key strategies for restoring access to the procedure in states where it’s banned. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, advocates have been exploring ballot measures to enshrine the procedure’s legality into state constitutions in at least a dozen states.
Amy B Wang contributed to this report.
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