Abortion remains legal in Iowa as top court refuses to revive ban

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – Iowa’s highest court did not revive a 2018 ban on most abortions on Friday, meaning that abortion will remain legal in the state up to 20 weeks of pregnancy for now.

One of the court’s seven justices did not take part in the ruling for an unspecified reason, and the remaining justices deadlocked 3-3. That automatically left in place a 2019 court order blocking the law.

Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, had asked the court to dissolve the order, which stemmed from a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood, arguing the law violated the right to privacy and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

“With this ruling, thousands of patients seeking care in the state and beyond can continue to receive the necessary, life-saving care that they need,” Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement.

Chris Schandevel, a lawyer for the governor, said that “Iowans will surely be disappointed by today’s result” and urged the state’s legislature to pass a new abortion ban.

Iowa passed a law banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks, in 2018. The law was blocked because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s longstanding 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.

The Supreme Court overturned Roe last year, and Reynolds immediately sought to revive the 2018 law. The trial court judge said there was no legal mechanism for doing that, and three Supreme Court justices agreed.

“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,” Justice Thomas Waterman wrote Friday.

Justice Christopher McDonald wrote for the other side that it was “inequitable to continue to enjoin the state from enforcing a law that is now presumptively constitutional.”

Waterman, McDonald and the non-participating judge, Dana Leanne Oxley, were all appointed by Republican governors.

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