Iowa supreme court allows six-week abortion ban to take effect

Iowa’s state supreme court on Friday told a lower court to let a strict abortion law take effect.

The court’s 4-3 ruling held that the law – which bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy – does not violate citizens’ fundamental rights under the state constitution, rejecting a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood.

The decision reversed a lower court order that blocked the 2023 law from going into effect. The law passed with exclusively Republican support in a one-day special session last July, making Friday’s ruling a win for the GOP in Iowa.

Most women do not know they are pregnant at six weeks.

Republican-led states across the country have limited abortion access since 2022, when the US supreme court overturned the federal abortion rights previously established by Roe v Wade.

Related: US supreme court allows emergency abortions in Idaho for now

For now, 14 states have near-total bans on abortion, and four – now including Iowa – have implemented six-week bans.

Representing Iowa during oral arguments in April, attorney Eric Wessan said that the state supreme court had already indicated what is appropriate in this case when the justices ruled that there’s no “fundamental right” to abortion in the state constitution.

“This court has never before recognized a quasi-fundamental or a fundamental-ish right,” he said.

But Planned Parenthood attorney Peter Im countered that there were core constitutional rights at stake that merit the court’s consideration of whether there is too heavy a burden on people seeking abortion access.

“It is emphatically this court’s role and duty to say how the Iowa constitution protects individual rights, how it protects bodily autonomy, how it protects Iowans’ rights to exercise dominion over their own bodies,” he argued.

Iowa’s law had previously been in effect for a few days before a district court judge halted it. The state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, appealed, setting the stage for Friday’s ruling.

The Associated Press contributed reporting