Mourning the loss of Iowa women's independence this July 4
Devastating 6-Week abortion ban ruling rocks Iowa
As fine art and live music animated the annual Des Moines arts festival, and clearing skies drew people to dine from food trucks Friday evening, others were gathering outside the Iowa State Capitol in shock, bewilderment and outrage.
Some wept and clung to one another in solidarity. Some carried signs with slogans like:
You, Your Dr. and No One Else.
Kim Reynolds, where did you get your medical degree?
And the saucier, Regulate Dick, Not Jane.
Hours earlier the Iowa Supreme Court – the same body that once made Iowa just the third state in the nation to recognize same sex-marriage – had declared that 6-week embryos had more rights than women, or girls old enough to menstruate. Iowa’s cutoff has been 20 weeks.
The inaccurately named Fetal Heartbeat law bans abortions before many even know they’re pregnant and before, doctors say, an actual heartbeat can be heard. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the law last year after her previous effort to limit abortions was overturned by Iowa’s courts. This one was deliberated and voted on during a special legislative session that lasted only one day, but had been appealed.
A day to decide the future of women’s rights over their bodies. A decision that will reverberate for generations to come.
I was going to the rally to chronicle people’s reactions for a column – or at least that’s what I said. But, showing up without a notebook, I realized I was at least equally there to anchor my own shaken psyche to some kind of hope.
It wasn’t easy. Despite the impassioned chants and the uniform appeals from speakers to elect reproductive rights supporters to the Iowa Legislature in November, some struggled to mask their own feelings of brokenness, as Des Moines ob-gyn Francesca Turner described it.
“It’s, like, despair and then, ‘OK, we have to stand up and fight,’ ” she told me, “and then despair.”
Because as Jennifer Konfrst, Iowa’s Democratic House minority leader, told those gathered, after the ruling she was flooded with e-mails and social media posts saying, “I voted last time and it didn’t help. Stop telling me to vote.”
That’s the reality we now face in Iowa, where Democratic lawmakers, who voted against the ban, are heavily outnumbered by anti-choice Republicans. All but one of Iowa’s statewide elected officials are Republicans. And one of them, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, withheld payments for emergency contraceptives for Iowa rape survivors for nearly a year and-a-half to audit the agency after taking the office from Democrat Tom Miller.
And because there’s no longer a role for the U.S. Supreme Court to play in defense of the 1973 ruling acknowledging women’s rights to end a pregnancy the court upended two years ago, tossing the issue back to states.
Also because here in Iowa, a once nonpartisan judicial selection process was tweaked in 2019 by the governor to give her a greater say in who sits on the highest court. https://www.iowapublicradio.org/news/2019-05-08/iowa-governor-signs-judicial-selection-changes-into-law
The selection of Justice Matthew McDermott, who wrote the majority opinion in this case, followed in 2020. He based the ruling on a state interest in “protecting unborn life." In her dissent, Chief Justice Susan Christensen wrote that the opinion, relied on male-dominated history and 1800s traditions.
Friday’s speakers were medical doctors and representatives of Planned Parenthood of North Central States, which sponsored the rally. Democratic lawmakers and candidates also shared their outrage. Many broke down as they told the stories of pregnant women and girls in states that already ban abortions (14 have total bans) dying from bleeding and sepsis related to problem pregnancies. Some of them had been turned away from hospital emergency rooms because they weren’t deemed sick enough to meet the exception to save a mother’s life.
As for the exceptions for rape or incest in Iowa’s law, speakers said they would likely be unenforceable since they require survivors to have promptly reported the assaults -- which most, out of legitimate fears, do not.
Eighteen-year-old Danika Jacobsen, a member of the Planned Parenthood teen council, rightly emphasized how disproportionately this law will affect people of color and of low income. We heard that pregnant Black women in Iowa die at six times the rate of white ones during childbirth.
Imagine working two jobs, lacking childcare and having to race to another state that allows abortions past six weeks to get one, once you learn you’re pregnant.
And here’s the paradox: Though 61% of Iowans say they support safe, legal abortions, a majority of Iowans keep electing Republican lawmakers who favor extremist bans like this one.
The disconnect means people are either not paying attention or haven’t made reproductive rights a top tier issue. Some might not have all the facts against the ambient noise and misinformation. Some might feel too overwhelmed or hopeless to even vote.
But that doesn’t entitle us to stop making the case wherever and however we can. Start with the practical part, and don’t let politicians get away with empty rhetoric. When Reynolds declares, “There is no right more sacred than life, and nothing more worthy of our strongest defense than the innocent unborn," remind her that the most common reason women say they seek abortions is that they lack the means to care for a child.
Ask her then about why she last year ended Iowa’s participation in a federal summer food program for low-income families that would have helped feed 240,000 school-age kids.
Ask her how, after pledging to “promote strong, healthy families,” she would flout federal child labor laws, for which Iowa was sanctioned. Besides letting kids work later hours than federal law allows, she has weakened protections in day care centers, increased the ratio of 2-year-olds per caregiver to 7-to-1, and allowed 16-year-old caregivers to go unsupervised.
That’s hardly protecting innocent children.
And while you might expect lawmakers who oppose abortions to press hard for greater birth control use, remind voters that the governor and GOP legislators drove abortion numbers up 25% between 2018 and 2109 after withdrawing from a federally-funded family planning program that had provided an annual $3 million in birth control and STD prevention supplies to thousands. It was replaced by a state-funded one that served less than a quarter of the other, to exclude agencies that also provide abortions, like Planned Parenthood.
That followed a decade in which Iowa abortions had decreased 56%.
If those politically-oriented moves don’t reek of political hypocrisy, consider the inconsistency of Reynolds’ stated support for in vitro fertilization. How does she square protecting the unborn from a process that requires discarding nonviable or extra embryos?
Here’s another point that needs making. Because of its already restrictive health care policies, Iowa ranks rock bottom among states in the number of ob-gyns per capita. As Dr. William Newland, a retired physician, has been warned, applications to Iowa medical schools are declining along with interest in residencies and jobs in this state for obstetricians, gynecologists and even pediatricians. Newland’s father-in-law, by the way, was the beloved late Republican Gov. Robert Ray, who I suspect would have agreed with his assessment of the state’s growing backwardness. That will only worsen.
Becoming an obstetrical care “desert,” affects expectant mothers most of all.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/rekha-basu/2022/05/04/roe-v-wade-abortions-continue-with-more-suffering/9629875002/
Maybe the most appropriate way to celebrate this Independence Day is by reminding other Iowans that until we vote for women to get back the most basic rights of self-determination, our state’s motto, “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain,” is meaningless.
Oh and while we’re talking elections, remember that David N. May, one of the four Supreme Court justices who voted for the 6-week ban, is up for retention in November.
So as we gather with friends, relatives, co-workers, and random folks at neighborhood picnics, community pools, potlucks or bars, let’s grab every opportunity for honest, respectful conversations on what’s really happening beneath the hyperbole. And remind people that without our voices and our votes, this once proud, forward-looking state is looking at some unthinkable outcomes.
This is Fantastic! Thank you for writing this!
Another thing that makes me angry, in Reynolds comments about the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling on 6 weeks, she was thankful to the court for doing what ALL Iowans wanted!
Um, NO! Not all of us wanted this!
I hope she doesn’t include “all Iowans,” as agreeing! We don’t agree with her dictatorship nor the rest of her Republicans BS!
Thank you as always for being the voice of so many on this topic and others. This ruling will change the face and health of Iowa in countless ways.