On the 46th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, reproductive rights activists won a victory Tuesday when an Iowa state judge struck down a 2018 law specifically designed by forced-birther activists to reach the Supreme Court in hopes the justices there now will weaken or overturn that 1973 ruling. The anti-abortion law was one of the strictest in the nation, but not the first of its kind.
In the summary ruling, which was no surprise to most observers, Judge Michael Huppert of the 5th Judicial District of Iowa wrote that a state law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected violates “both the due process and equal protection provisions of the Iowa Constitution.” Huppert ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and the Iowa City-based Emma Goldman Clinic. Last month, both sides in the case made clear they would appeal if they lost:
“[The] ruling is a victory for every Iowan who has ever needed or will need a safe, legal abortion,” said Dr. Jill Meadows, medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland.
[...]
“I am incredibly disappointed in today’s court ruling because I believe that if death is determined when a heart stops beating, then a beating heart indicates life,” [Republican] Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a statement Tuesday.
The Roe ruling barred states from prohibiting abortion before fetal viability, something physicians place around the 24th week of gestation. Up until eight weeks of gestation, in fact, embryos aren’t yet considered fetuses. In addition, the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey barred states from adding an “undue burden” on women seeking to terminate their pregnancies.
In the past eight years, right-wing activists across the nation have attacked women’s reproductive freedom affirmed under these rulings with literally hundreds of legislative initiatives that generated scores of restrictive new laws, several of which have been overturned by state or federal courts.
The first fetal heartbeat bill emerged in Ohio in 2011, but it failed to clear both houses of the legislature. In 2016, however, the legislature did pass such a bill. This was vetoed by Governor John Kasich on constitutional grounds, even though he counts himself among the ranks of forced-birthers. In 2013, both Arkansas and North Dakota passed fetal heartbeat bills that were subsequently struck down by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court chose not to review the cases.
These decisions did not stop other states or members of the U.S. Congress from trying to pass similar laws. Besides Iowa, Tennessee, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Missouri, and Kentucky have all made forays into this territory. Indeed, those last five states have introduced fetal heartbeat bills this month.
Short of a Supreme Court overturning Roe, these and some other restrictive laws that attempt to make abortion more difficult, more time-consuming, more expensive, and more invasive of women’s personal decisions will continue to fail the constitutional test. Given the new make-up of the court, however, with Brett Kavanaugh having replaced Anthony Kennedy, there’s no certainty about exactly how a major abortion case might turn out. Most longtime observers fear the ruling would not favor reproductive rights.
Meanwhile, states continue to pass restrictive laws that do pass constitutional muster. And even in instances where laws are overturned, the damage is often already done. In Texas, for instance, a law mandating rules for abortion clinics and doctors was overturned in 2016. But by the time the court got around to making its ruling, of the 40 abortion-providing clinics that had operated before the law was passed, only 19 had survived.