A law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect in Iowa on Monday, further extending the list of US states that have banned or severely restricted the right, which has been at the heart of the Democratic presidential campaign.
The new law bans most abortions once a heartbeat has been detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. At that point, many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.
The legislation was signed into law by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds last year but stalled until the state Supreme Court weighed in this summer. “This is a victory for life,” the governor said last week.
The law was made possible more broadly by the end of federal protection of abortion in the United States, decided a little over two years ago by the American Supreme Court. This had been profoundly overhauled by President Donald Trump during his term.
“This morning, more than 1.5 million Iowa women woke up with fewer rights than they had last night, because of a new Trump abortion ban,” Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential candidate in November against the Republican billionaire, wrote Monday.
The vice president, who has long taken up the issue, launched a week of mobilization on Monday, with her campaign promising “dozens” of events in the coming days.
In March, she visited a Planned Parenthood clinic that performed abortions, a first for a sitting vice-president according to the American press.
“In November, we will block Trump’s extreme abortion bans at the ballot box,” she added Monday.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision, abortion advocacy has delivered local victories to Democrats in race-based elections, even in conservative-leaning states like Ohio and Kansas.
Democrats are hoping the issue will also help them convince voters in November to mobilize against Donald Trump — who has recently softened his position on the issue.
Twenty states
Iowa law provides exceptions for rape, incest, danger to the mother’s life and serious fetal developmental abnormalities.
But in states that have implemented similar exceptions, fear of prosecution has sometimes led doctors to refuse to intervene even in cases of serious complications.
Iowa becomes 18e States with a near-total ban on abortion or after six weeks of pregnancy, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights organization. A few other states have also adopted gestational limits of, say, 12 or 15 weeks.
Until now, abortions were possible up to about 20 weeks in Iowa, a midwestern US state won by Donald Trump in 2020.
But according to a March 2023 poll, 61% of Iowans believed abortion should be legal in most cases.
“Patients are going to be forced to travel hundreds of miles, if they can afford it,” to states where abortion is still legal, said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Another option for women: activist networks or telemedicine services that offer to send abortion pills anywhere in the country, including via doctors located in Democratic states that protect them from prosecution. These pills are approved up to 10 weeks of pregnancy by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA).