Wade, ruling that abortion laws should be subject to what is called "rational-basis review," the lowest and most permissive standard for constitutionality challenges. Supreme Court in 1992 established an intermediate standard for abortion laws: "undue burden." That standard focuses on whether a law excessively limits a woman's ability to obtain an abortion.īut it reversed that precedent in its Dobbs decision last summer overturning Roe v. Until reversing itself last year, the Iowa Supreme Court had considered abortion a fundamental right under the state constitution - so courts were likely to strike down any laws restricting abortion. If a law impacts a person's fundamental rights, it must meet the highest legal standard of "strict scrutiny." To do this, laws are considered under a set of legal standards. must decide whether laws wrongfully restrict an individual's liberty or impose justifiable limits. What is the legal standard for abortion in Iowa? It's still unclearĬourts in the U.S. Patients must wait at least 24 hours between their initial appointment and the procedure. Friday's ruling does not change Iowa's abortion laws.Ībortion is currently legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. Is abortion still legal in Iowa? By default, yesĪbortion is still legal in Iowa. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in April on whether the state should lift the 2019 injunction on the law and allow it to take effect. Wade case, which had legalized abortion nationwide.Īs a result, Reynolds asked the courts to reconsider the six-week abortion ban. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled last summer that the state constitution does not protect a fundamental right to an abortion, and the U.S. But the legal landscape for abortion law has shifted drastically since then. The state did not immediately appeal that decision. Opponents quickly filed the suit that resulted in the district court's decision blocking the law from ever taking effect. It would ban nearly all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, when the first cardiac impulses can be detected in an embryo. The Iowa Legislature passed the so-called fetal heartbeat law in 2018, and Reynolds signed it. What led up to this Iowa Supreme Court abortion decision? "It would be ironic and troubling for our court to become the first state supreme court in the nation to hold that trash set out in a garbage can for collection is entitled to more constitutional protection than a woman’s interest in autonomy and dominion over her own body," he wrote. Waterman emphasized that dissolving the injunction would be "unprecedented." He cited a 2021 Supreme Court decision that prohibits police officers from searching a person's trash without a warrant. "I disagree with this results-oriented approach to deciding cases," he wrote. McDonald called Waterman, Christensen and Mansfield "a three-person super general assembly," writing that they "set aside that respect and caution" in their decision to not allow the law to take effect. The court's 64 pages of opinions are biting. "There is no 'legal uncertainty' under Iowa law there is only my colleagues’ refusal to apply 'well settled' Iowa law." This has been 'well settled' law in this state for more than a century," he wrote. "When a case adjudging a statute unconstitutional is overruled, the statute becomes operative without reenactment. McDonald, in the opinion joined by McDermott and May, argued that the abortion ban should be allowed to take effect, as the injunction was based upon court decisions that have since been overturned. and then to dissolve an injunction to put a statute into effect for the first time in the same case in which that very enactment was declared unconstitutional years earlier," Waterman wrote. now asks our court to do something that has never happened in Iowa history: to simultaneously bypass the legislature and change the law. Waterman, in the opinion joined by Christensen and Mansfield, wrote that it would be "legislating from the bench" to allow the law to go into effect. The 3-3 split - Justice Dana Oxley was recused from the case - means the district court's order is affirmed and that the law will remain permanently blocked. In opinions released Friday, Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justices Edward Mansfield and Thomas Waterman favored affirming a district court's order blocking the law Justices Christopher McDonald, Matthew McDermott and David May favored reversing the district court. Kim Reynolds had asked the court to reinstate the law, which never took effect after it was passed in 2018, in the wake of major decisions last year limiting abortion protections under the Iowa and U.S. Iowa's long-blocked six-week abortion ban will remain permanently enjoined after the state Supreme Court deadlocked on whether it should be revived. View Gallery: Iowa Senate debates constitutional amendment over right to an abortion
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