Iowa’s near-total abortion ban and what you can do

What the law means, plus resources for people who need help

On Monday, Iowa’s near-total abortion ban went into effect. The ban is one of the most restrictive in the country, and it’s being enforced in a state that is also banning books, restricting SNAP benefits, restricting gender-affirming care and banning discussion of LGBTQ issues in classrooms. Iowa also turned down $29 million in aid for summer food assistance. Meanwhile, the state has been struggling to recruit doctors, and one-third of our counties are maternity care deserts.

In a state that loves paying lip service to freedom, the only people truly free are cisgender, heterosexual, financially comfortable men. 

Speaking to the Associated Press, anti-abortion activist Maggie DeWitte called Monday a celebration of life, stating: “Today is celebration for life for moms, for babies and for the entire state,” she said. “To think now that we will finally have protection for children is really hard to put into words.”

Of course, the reality is that abortion bans kill pregnant people and result in higher infant mortality rates.

What does this bill mean?

On paper, the bill provides exceptions for rape and incest, and there are carve-outs for miscarriage care. But the law requires that instances of incest be reported within 145 days, and rape within 45 days. But 60 percent of rapes are not reported to the police.

The law would also require doctors providing an abortion to adjudicate what qualifies as rape or incest, and the Iowa Medical Board is requiring doctors to interrogate their patients to ascertain if they are real rape victims. The rape has to be prosecutable to qualify its victim for an abortion. And since 5% of rapists actually spend one night in jail, I’m going to go ahead and say this exception is a bunch of garbage that is designed to intimidate and humiliate the victim — or to harass doctors out of attempting to provide abortion care in even the most extreme circumstances.

Perhaps most importantly, as we’ve seen in Mississippi, these carve-outs exist in name only. 

Exceptions for miscarriage are included in Iowa’s law, but only if a fetal heartbeat is not detected. Writing in “Abortion, Every Day,” Jessica Valenti explains, “The vast majority of post-Roe horror stories from miscarrying women have come from those who were denied care because there was still a fetal heartbeat. This has led to women going septic, hemorrhaging, and being turned away from hospital emergency rooms until their fetus’ heartbeat stops or their lives are in danger.”

There is also a carve-out for fetal abnormalities, but only if they are “incompatible with life.” And what does that mean? Well, your guess is as good as mine, and doctors who fall afoul of the rules risk a fine of up to $10,000 or their medical license.

We don’t have to guess what will happen. This has played out in other states to varying degrees, and the result is that pregnant people will be left in dire situations before their lives are even considered worth saving.

• Jessica Valenti
  wrote an excellent breakdown of Iowa’s abortion ban.

• Iowa Public Radio has an excellent story on how this ban is not going to just affect Iowa but also the rest of the Midwest.

• And for MSNBC I wrote about how this abortion ban affects all people seeking maternity care.

• Michaela Ramm at The Des Moines Register wrote a very good inside look at a clinic in Ames days before the ban went into place.

• Also, last month I wrote about how this ban reveals that no one is going to save us. We have to do the work ourselves.

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Okay, but what can I do?

Obviously, we have to vote. This seems like a real no-brainer, but Democrats in Iowa did not show up to the polls in 2022. 

The momentum around the Harris campaign has been a huge lift to Democrats in the state, and I’ve heard from several Iowa lawmakers that the Harris campaign has reached out and been proactive on this issue. Please do not be afraid to hold your lawmakers accountable. 

Instead of hand-wringing about what Iowa has become¹, get out there and make Iowa different. Register people to vote. Work the polls. DOOR KNOCK. Elections aren’t won because politicians did good tweets; they are won because people did the work to get the votes.

But the election is months away and it is not going to be a panacea for Iowans. Unlike in some other states, pushing to get abortion on the ballot as an amendment in Iowa will take years and years. Also, flipping control of the Iowa legislature is going to be a huge lift. In the meantime, people need help now.

Resources

• Plan C offers free abortion pills mailed to any state (yes, even Iowa) in discreet packaging. 

• Red State Access is a great organization that offers help and support.

• The Iowa Jane collective is a mutual aid fund that exists entirely to help Iowans access abortion. 

• Autonomy Iowa City is also offering a wide range of help and support to Iowans in need of care.

• I am the board co-chair of the Iowa Abortion Access Fund, one of the oldest abortion funds in the nation. Like the Janes, we exist just to help Iowans access abortion care. And no matter what laws Iowa legislators pass, we are still doing the work. We recently partnered with the Chicago Access Fund to ensure that we can keep operating. If you need help, you can call the number on our website or fill out the online form.

I want to point out that while this partnership is amazing, the Chicago Fund is experiencing a lot of financial strain due to the overwhelming number of people in Illinois and in the surrounding states that need help, and so is the Iowa Abortion Access Fund. When people have to travel out of state, costs for abortion care include childcare, travel, hotel stays, and days of lost wages. Across the country, abortion access funds are doing the work that politicians refuse to do. So please donate. 

• Since 2021, IAAF has seen a 27 percent increase in requests for funding.

• So far, in 2024, our requests for funding are up 7 percent over last year.

• Already, Chicago is being overwhelmed with calls and requests and we are really concerned that our funding will not be able to keep up. Across the nation, abortion funds are struggling to meet the demands of the cost of care and travel.

If you want to volunteer, may I say that the IAAF really needs a treasurer. And if a lawyer wanted to join our board, we’d be thrilled. If either of those roles is for you, email us at info@iaafund.org. 

Final thoughts

I’ve written about this topic over and over. Maybe you are sick of hearing about it — imagine how I feel. Sick of hearing my right to live debated and pontificated over as if it were nothing more than a horse-race issue.

I’m so tired of sitting around hearing Iowa politicians call me selfish for wanting access to lifesaving care. Last year, while I was seeking care for a medical issue, I asked a doctor for a hysterectomy and was told that I needed to consider the wants of a “future” partner. And I snapped that this was my life and I wasn’t going to get pregnant in my 40s in Kim Reynolds’ Iowa. I left that doctor — but my next doctor, a woman, said the same thing.

It’s demoralizing to have to constantly advocate for your own right to live. I am real. I am not a hypothetical. And I deserve more of a right to privacy and autonomy than a bag of trash.

It’s worth pointing out, over and over, that Iowa Republicans are celebrating this ban as a way to support families and ensure life. But all bans like this do is narrowly define who gets to be a family and what that family looks like. It’s a policy noose that puts a tight chokehold on who and what is acceptable. And anything that falls outside of the rigid, white, heterosexual norms is heavily policed. And even things that are normal within those norms are being controlled. After all, the majority of children in America live in “nontraditional” homes.

This is not an issue that you can be moderate on. All that middle-ground talk results in fewer rights in a country, state, and world, where I deserve to be an equal and I deserve to be free.  There is no negotiation when it comes to my rights and the rights of other human beings.

In so many ways, this election is about equality, about who gets to be free and who isn’t. It’s why there is such a huge gender divide between Democrats and Republicans; why so many of the policies and laws attack LGBTQ people; and why cis men are so furiously holding onto a system that benefits them and only them.

As Moira Donegan wrote so clearly:

The Republican plan, in short, is to sabotage or revoke any cultural or policy change that allows women to live as men’s equals. They instead aim to reshape policy, culture and the law to keep women in the home, dependent, without control over their own bodies and at the mercy of men.

They aim, that is, to advance so-called “family values” in which birth is mandatory, marriage is inescapable, children are property rather than persons with rights of their own, and men are in charge. There’s a word for this dark vision of a world in which the private sphere is wholly controlled by husbands and fathers. That word is “patriarchy.”

1. All states have had some questionable eras, and will have them again. That’s democracy, baby.