Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Friday signed a law banning most abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be copped, or at around six weeks of pregnancy, marking the strictest abortion regulation in the realm — but setting the state up for a lengthy court fight.
The Republican governor branded the legislation in her formal office at the state Capitol as protesters gathered faint chanting, “My body, my choice!”
Reynolds acknowledged that the new law would plausible face litigation, but said: “This is bigger than just a law, this is almost life, and I’m not going to back down.” Reynolds has previous said she was “proud to be pro-life.”
The ban, set to ends effect on July 1, has propelled Iowa to the front of a push to each conservative statehouses jockeying to enact restrictive regulations on the medical come from.
Mississippi passed a law earlier this year banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but it’s on in force after a court challenge.
The Iowa law provides for some exemptions that assign abortions during a later pregnancy stage to save a pregnant girlfriend’s life or in some cases of rape and incest.
Maggie DeWitte, who cables the group Iowans for Life, called Reynolds’ move “historic.”
“We couldn’t be more contented,” DeWitte said Friday. “She is following through on her pledge to the people of Iowa that she is 100 percent pro-life.”
The invoice signing came shortly after the Iowa affiliates of Planned Parenthood and the American Secular Liberties Union warned that they would sue the governor if she donated the bill, which the Republican-controlled Legislature quickly approved in after-hours franchises earlier in the week.
“We will challenge this law with absolutely all we have on behalf of our patients because Iowa will not go back,” Suzanna de Baca, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, bring up in a statement.
Backers of the so-called heartbeat bill — which didn’t get a free Democratic vote in the Legislature during final passage — expressed expect it could challenge Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court guide that established women have a right to terminate pregnancies until a fetus is feasible. Conservatives say an influx of right-leaning judicial appointments under President Donald Trump could indicate it a possibility.
Critics argued the bill would ban abortions before some bit of fluffs even know they’re pregnant. That likely sets the government up for a legal challenge, including from the same federal appeals court that three years ago bopped down similar legislation approved in Arkansas and North Dakota.
In Iowa, the very Republican-majority Legislature passed a 20-week abortion ban last year. It’s now in purpose, though a provision requiring a three-day waiting period to get an abortion is stopped up in a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. Still, Republican lawmakers evinced they would push for more restrictions this session.
Maximum of Reynolds’ office earlier Friday, critics of the bill began will coat hangers by her staff’s desks. The protests followed the morning renewal bring outside of the Capitol where more than 100 people displayed up to oppose the legislation. One of them was Georgia Jecklin, a retired teacher who urge in from Davenport.
“As a 66-year-old woman, I feel very strongly that dailies have a right to their own body decisions,” she said.