Pro-Life Iowa Rising

This week, the Iowa Coalition of Pro-Life Leaders held a rally in the state’s capitol rotunda and announced plans to go on the offensive and introduce a Life at Conception Act.

State legislatures in left leaning states like Main, California, Michigan, New York, Maryland, and Colorado have all recently become sanctuaries for abortions, while others like South Carolina have temporarily fallen captive to a pro-abortion state supreme court.

But in Iowa, the overwhelmingly pro-life citizenry is organizing and making real progress.

A lot of this progress is the work of the Iowa Coalition of ProLife Leaders, which in 2017 brought together the often warring factions of the pro-life movement into one coalition to work on shared objectives and attempt to raise the standard and demand results from public officials.

The Coalition would be put to work soon after coming together, as, in 2018, a pro-abortion majority in the Iowa Supreme Court in the case of Heartland v. Reynolds sided with abortion giant Planned Parenthood, finding that there was a fundamental state right to abortion that would essentially invalidate any and all pro-life laws.

This was not the first time that Iowans successfully battled an activist court. In 2010, the people voted to oust all the supreme court judges in a landmark election that rebuked judges who had voted to create a state constitutional right to same-sex “marriage”. Unfortunately, first Democrat members of the Iowa legislature and then the US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges would cut off any further attempts to return the definition of marriage to its natural one as the union of one man and one woman.

However, the godless left was not finished with Iowa, and after settling the issue of same sex “marriage” the activists on the court turned their sights to abortion, creating the state’s constitutional right to abortion by judicial fiat in 2018.

However, this time, conservatives in Iowa, led by Governor Kim Reynolds would defeat the leftists on the Iowa Supreme Court.

In the summer of 2022, four years after the first decision of the Iowa Supreme Court, and just before the Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturned Roe v. Wade at the federal level, the Iowa Supreme court, with four new judges appointed by Governor Reynolds, reversed the 2018 decision and ruled that the right to abortion was not a fundamental state right. The reversal was a victory for the Governor, Kim Reynolds and for the Iowa Coalition of Pro-Life leaders.

In other conservative states like Kansas and South Carolina, where the liberal leaning state bar associations have an oversized impact on the selection of judges, subsequent pro-life legislatures and governors have not been able to appoint conservative supreme court justices to correct the pro-abortion judicial activism. This has led South Carolina’s conservative governor, Henry McMaster to propose changes to the nomination process that put the nomination into the hands of the people’s representatives and not unaccountable, often left leaning, bar associations.

What’s next in Iowa?

As the State’s Supreme Court takes up the question of the constitutionality of the state’s heartbeat ban, pro-lifers are setting their sights on a higher aim.

After having replaced the Supreme Court and overturned the state’s pro-abortion ruling, pro-lifers in Iowa have unified around a 100% pro-life approach which would defend the right to life of preborn children with no exceptions.

The coalition of pro-life leaders announced at their rally on the capitol rotunda that they will be proposing a Life at Conception Act.

Rep. Luana Stoltenberg, R-Davenport, said she plans to file the Life at Conception bill shortly.

“My prayer is that Iowa will pass a life at conception bill to protect their most vulnerable and defenseless citizens,” she said.

Stoltenberg, 62, said she had three abortions as a teenager, and the procedures left her unable to have children. She later developed a Christian faith, she said, and opposing abortion was a key part of her 2022 campaign.

At the rally, the new pro-life Attorney General and the Governor all vowed to continue to push to defend the right to life .

The addition of Attorney General Brenna Bird to the list of pro-life allies is especially significant, as she recently defeated one of America’s longest serving Democrat Attorney Generals, Tom Miller. Prior to Attorney General Bird, Iowa had elected Democrats to the position since 1979.