The Iowa state legislature passed a bill on Wednesday, May 2 to ban abortion past six weeks. This is the strictest abortion restriction in the country, and it seems like Iowa is trying to get as close as possible to reversing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, while the law still technically exists. According to NBC News, most women don’t actually learn that they’re pregnant until after six weeks, so this bill is essentially guaranteeing they won’t even have a choice to abort once they find out. This bill robs women of their bodily autonomy and is setting a precedent for other states to enact similar bills.
The law makes abortion illegal as soon as a “heartbeat” can be detected, which is inaccurate and misleading. What is being called a heartbeat is actually fetal pole cardiac activity; this is much more complicated. According to Slate, during the early stages of a pregnancy, the embryo yolk sac thickens at one end, and it can be detected through a vaginal ultrasound by about six weeks. When this happens, some motion can be detected on the ultrasound, which qualifies as early cardiac activity. Choosing to label this as a heartbeat is calculated and deliberate, as it makes it seem like a fetus could have a chance at surviving outside of the womb at this stage, which is just not possible.
Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, but anti-choice activists have been trying to undo it since it was passed. The main argument is about “protecting life”, and they consider an unborn fetus a life from the moment of conception. The Iowa bill is able to exist because it isn’t banning abortion, just restricting it to a certain week. But it might as well have banned it, because most abortions happen after six weeks anyway. Roe v. Wade also allows for a “balance” between protecting women’s health and protecting human life, and those in favor of the bill are able to use the latter argument to justify the bill’s passing. Iowa legislators have said they hope the law sets a nationwide precedent, and Republican representatives from other states already praised the bill’s passing and say they hope it inspires similar bills in their states.
However, Roe v. Wade contains a provision that access to abortion cannot place an “undue burden” upon the woman, which means that abortion needs to be easy for a woman to obtain if she so chooses and not force her to go to unnecessary lengths just to get one. For example, even though the Supreme Court struck it down, Texas attempted to pass a bill that required abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers and have hospital admitting privileges. This was unreasonable because the majority of abortions are done non-surgically in the first thirteen weeks weeks of pregnancy and are safer than childbirth, and the unnecessary requirements made half of the state’s forty-one abortion clinics close. The bill passed in Iowa could meet the undue burden standard, because it would require a woman to travel out of state to get an abortion past six weeks, which is not feasible for a lot of women due to time and/or money.
Planned Parenthood announced that they would be suing the state of Iowa to prevent the law from going into effect. However, the fact that this bill was even able to pass in the first place shows that the anti-choice side will not be going down without a fight. It would be naive to think that this bill is never going to actually pass because of how severe it is, and that kind of thinking leads to complacency. This bill cannot be allowed to slip through under the radar or simply be forgotten about after a week or two. It is an egregious attack on women’s reproductive rights, and we must do whatever we can to keep it from going into effect and prevent other states from passing their own versions of the bill.
Bills like these that are based on medically inaccurate language and that have been disavowed by actual doctors should not be able to pass. It is misleading, and those who proposed it should be forced to phrase it using medically accurate terminology so people actually know the truth about what it is suggesting, instead of having their emotions played by pretending it is the same as a heartbeat. This bill will do nothing but increase the amount of unsafe abortions and put women’s health at risk. It is not about preserving life. It is about controlling women’s bodies and doing whatever it takes to strip them of a choice all together.
