Abortion Battle Heats Up in State Courts: Iowa District Court Rules for Planned Parenthood, Governor Reynolds Vows Appeal

For almost fifty years, state courts had very little work to do on abortion, as Roe v. Wade ruled the abortion law landscape with an iron fist. But since the Dobbs decision, the powerful abortion lobby has been busy fighting a 50 front war to use the state courts to cement the “right” to kill children before birth.

On Monday, a state district court in Iowa ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood – the corporation that court documents prove kills 95% of Iowa’s preborn babies – by blocking the state’s “heartbeat law” that prohibits killing most children after their heartbeat can be detected. The Iowa heartbeat law, which included a life of the mother exception, does not protect the right to life of children conceived in rape or of children with diagnostics of severe disabilities.

Abortion Wars Rage in Iowa

Iowa is a perfect example of the evolution of the battle over legalized child killing.

In May of 2018, Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law Iowa’s heartbeat law.

Then, in June of 2018, a leftist dominated Iowa Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a fundamental right in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Reynolds (a case involving a separate, 24 hr. waiting period, law). This meant that the 24 hr. waiting period and any other restrictions upon the so-called right to abortion, would be unconstitutional.

Sure enough, in January of 2019, a state court ruled that, following the precedent of the recent pro-abortion state supreme court ruling, the heartbeat law was also unconstitutional.

Then, in May of 2022, after four judges of the Iowa Supreme Court were replaced by the governor, the Iowa supreme court reversed itself in the second Planned Parenthood v. Reynolds case ruling that abortion was not a state constitutional right.

This week’s ruling by a lower court state judge attempts to revive a prior pro-abortion ruling by the Iowa state supreme court from 2015, which established an “undue burden” standard to overrule a prohibition on telemedicine administration of dangerous abortion poisons, in what was essentially the adoption of the same standrad that was in place at the federal level after the US Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe and Casey.

After the fall of the so called “right” to abortion in Iowa and then at the US Supreme Court, the case to revive Iowa’s heartbeat law was brought by Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of Governor Reynolds because Iowa’s Democrat Attorney General, Tom Miller favored legalized child killing and refused to bring the case. Since the case was brought, Tom Miller, who had been America’s longest serving state Attorney General, was finally narrowly defeated in the 2022 midterm election, being replaced by Republican Brenna Bird.

Governor Reynolds has vowed to appeal the decision immediately to the Iowa State Supreme Court, where a conservative majority is likely to rule in favor of the heartbeat law.