Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc., Emma Goldman Clinic, and Sarah Traxler M.D. v. Kim Reynolds ex rel. State of Iowa, and Iowa Board of Medicine ( 2024 )

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA
No. 23–1145
Submitted April 11, 2024—Filed June 28, 2024
PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF THE HEARTLAND, INC., EMMA GOLDMAN CLINIC,
and SARAH TRAXLER,
Appellees,
vs.
KIM REYNOLDS ex rel. STATE OF IOWA, and IOWA BOARD OF MEDICINE,
Appellants.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Joseph Seidlin,
Judge.
In a case challenging the constitutionality of a law prohibiting abortion
after a fetal heartbeat is detected, the defendant state officials appeal the district
court’s granting of a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the law.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
McDermott, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which McDonald,
Oxley, and May, JJ., joined. Christensen, C.J., filed a dissenting opinion, in
which Mansfield and Waterman, JJ., joined. Mansfield, J., filed a dissenting
opinion, in which Christensen, C.J., and Waterman, J., joined.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General; Eric Wessan (argued), Solicitor General;
and Daniel Johnston, Assistant Attorney General, for appellants.
Peter Im (argued) of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Washing-
ton, D.C.; Rita Bettis Austen of American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa Founda-
2
tion, Des Moines; Caitlin Slessor and Samuel E. Jones of Shuttleworth & Inger-
soll, P.L.C., Cedar Rapids; and Dylan Cowit and Anjali Salvador of Planned
Parenthood Federation of America, New York, New York, for appellees.
John Eidsmoe, Montgomery, Alabama, for amici curiae Foundation for
Moral Law and Lutherans for Life.
David E. Fowler of Constitutional Government Defense Fund, Franklin,
Tennessee, and Justin Reid of Reid Law Firm PLLC, Des Moines, for amici curiae
32 State Family Policy Councils and Family Policy Alliance.
Christopher E. Mills of Spero Law LLC, Charleston, South Carolina, and
Timm Reid of Reid Law Firm PLLC, Des Moines, for amicus curiae American
College of Pediatricians.
Peter M. Sand, West Des Moines, for amicus curiae American Association
of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
D. John Sauer of James Otis Law Group, LLC, St. Louis, Missouri, and
Daniel A. Dlouhy of Dlouhy Law, PC, East Dubuque, Illinois, for amicus curiae
Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
Theodore E. Rokita, Indiana Attorney General; James W. Barta, Indiana
Deputy Solicitor General; and Thomas M. Bright, Indiana Deputy Attorney Gen-
eral, Indianapolis, Indiana, for amici curiae State of Indiana and 16 Other States.
Ryan Benn, Indianola, and Mario Diaz, Alexandria, Virginia, for amicus
curiae Concerned Women for America.
Christopher P. Schandevel, John J. Bursch, and Erin M. Hawley, Lans-
downe, Virginia; Noah H. Ridgway of Hagenow Gustoff & Karas LLP, Des Moines;
and Jacob Phillips, Orlando, Florida, for amicus curiae Alliance Defending Free-
dom.
3
Chuck Hurley of the Family Leader, Urbandale, and Olivia F. Summers,
Washington, D.C., for amici curiae 45 Members of the Iowa Legislature and the
American Center for Law & Justice.
Alan R. Ostergren, Des Moines, for amicus curiae the Kirkwood Institute,
Inc.
Roxanne Barton Conlin and Devin C. Kelly of Roxanne Conlin & Associ-
ates, P.C., Des Moines, for amicus curiae Interfaith Alliance of Iowa.
Joshua S. Opperman and Sonci Kingery, Des Moines, for amici curiae Iowa
Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
Sarah E. Wilson of Sarah E. Wilson Law Firm, PLC, Ankeny, and Julie E.
Fink and Selena Kitchens of Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, New York, New York, for
amicus curiae The National Infertility Association.
Laura Schultes of RSH Legal, Cedar Rapids, and Jayme Jonat and Char-
lotte Baigent of Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP, New York, New York, for amicus
curiae Medical Students for Choice.
Scott M. Brennan, Tyler L. Coe, and Katelynn T. McCollough of Dentons
Davis Brown, Des Moines; Diane Siegel Danoff and Christopher J. Merken of
Dechert LLP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Nina S. Riegelsberger of Dechert
LLP, New York, New York, for amici curiae Non-Iowan Abortion Care Providers.
Nicole A. Saharsky of Mayer Brown LLP, Washington, DC, and Dane Schu-
mann of Capitol Counsel, P.L.L.C., Urbandale, for amici curiae American College
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, Society for
Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Society of Family Planning, and American Society for
Reproductive Medicine.
4
MCDERMOTT, Justice.
The State asks us to dissolve a temporary injunction blocking enforcement
of a statute that prohibits physicians, with certain exceptions, from performing
an abortion after detecting a fetal heartbeat. In granting the injunction, the dis-
trict court applied an “undue burden” test and concluded that the petitioners
were likely to succeed in their constitutional substantive due process challenge.
The State asks us to dissolve that injunction, arguing that the district court ap-
plied the wrong constitutional test and that the court must instead review the
abortion restriction under the less demanding “rational basis” test.
When a party alleges that a statute violates a due process right, the nature
of the individual right at stake dictates the constitutional test that the court
applies. Under our well-established tiers of scrutiny, if the government action
implicates a “fundamental” right, we apply the strict scrutiny test and determine
whether the government’s action is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling gov-
ernment interest. But if the right at stake is not a fundamental right, then we
apply the rational basis test and determine whether the law is rationally related
to a legitimate state interest.
We have previously held that abortion is not a fundamental right under
the Iowa Constitution. See Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Reynolds
ex rel. State (PPH 2022), 975 N.W.2d 710, 740 (Iowa 2022). Applying our estab-
lished tiers of scrutiny, we hold that abortion restrictions alleged to violate the
due process clause are subject to the rational basis test. Employing that test
here, we conclude that the fetal heartbeat statute is rationally related to the
state’s legitimate interest in protecting unborn life. We thus reverse the district
court order entering the temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the fetal
heartbeat statute and remand for further proceedings.
5
I.
The law challenged in this case bars most abortions when there is a “de-
tectable fetal heartbeat.” Iowa Code § 146E.2(2)(a) (2023). Under this statute, a
physician must perform an abdominal ultrasound to detect cardiac activity and
“shall inform the pregnant woman, in writing,” whether any cardiac activity was
detected and, if so, that “an abortion is prohibited.” Id. § 146E.2(1)(b)(1)–(2). The
pregnant woman must sign a form acknowledging receipt of this information. Id.
§ 146E.2(1)(c).
The statute includes exceptions that allow an abortion after detection of a
fetal heartbeat if there is a medical emergency or if the pregnancy resulted from
rape or incest. Id. §§ 146E.1(3)–(4), .2(2)(a). The medical emergency exception
allows an abortion to “preserve the life of the pregnant woman whose life is en-
dangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a
life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy.” Id.
§ 146A.1(6)(a); id. § 146E.1(4). For the rape exception to apply, the rape must be
“reported within forty-five days of the incident to a law enforcement agency or to
a public or private health agency which may include a family physician.” Id.
§ 146E.1(3)(a). The incest exception applies if the incest “is reported within one
hundred forty days of the incident to a law enforcement agency or to a public or
private health agency which may include a family physician.” Id. § 146E.1(3)(b).
Abortions are almost entirely prohibited when a fetal heartbeat is detected
after twenty or more weeks. See id. § 146E.2(2)(b). The only exceptions after that
date are when “in the physician’s reasonable medical judgment the pregnant
woman has a condition which the physician deems a medical emergency” or
when “the abortion is necessary to preserve the life of an unborn child.” Id.
This statute came into being after Governor Kim Reynolds called a special
session of the Iowa Legislature for “the sole purpose of enacting legislation that
6
addresses abortion and protects unborn lives.” Press Release, Off. of the Gover-
nor of Iowa, Gov. Reynolds Calls Special Session to Enact Pro-life Legislation
(July 5, 2023), https://governor.iowa.gov/press-release/2023-07-05/gov-reyn-
olds-calls-special-session-enact-pro-life-legislation [https://perma.cc/7YLY-
YDD9]. On July 11, 2023, at that special session, the legislature passed a fetal
heartbeat bill nearly mirroring an earlier fetal heartbeat statute enacted in 2018.
Compare 2023 Iowa Acts ch. 1, §§ 1–2 (codified at Iowa Code §§ 146E.1, .2
(2024)), with 2018 Iowa Acts ch. 1132, §§ 3–4 (codified at Iowa Code §§ 146C.1,
.2 (2019)). Governor Reynolds announced her plan to sign the bill at an event on
July 14.
On July 12, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Emma Goldman Clinic,
and Sarah Traxler, M.D. (collectively, “Planned Parenthood”), filed a petition for
declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. They named as defendants Governor
Reynolds and the Iowa Board of Medicine (together, “the State”). The petition for
declaratory judgment alleged that the fetal heartbeat statute violated three pro-
visions in the Iowa Constitution: the due process clause in article I, § 9; the
“inalienable rights” clause in article I, § 1; and the equal protection clause in
article I, §§ 1 and 6. That same day, Planned Parenthood also moved for an
emergency temporary injunction. Its motion asked the district court to block en-
forcement of the statute until the court could rule on the merits of the constitu-
tional challenge. The district court held a hearing on the motion on July 14—the
same day that Governor Reynolds signed the fetal heartbeat statute into law.
On July 17, the district court held that Planned Parenthood had standing
to bring its claims, the case was ripe, and that an injunction should be issued
barring the State from enforcing the fetal heartbeat law until a final ruling in the
case. The district court also ordered that the Iowa Board of Medicine, which is
7
tasked with creating administrative rules to implement the statute, should nev-
ertheless proceed with rulemaking. The State sought interlocutory review of the
district court order, which we granted.
II.
The order challenged in this appeal was not a final judgment on the merits
but rather an order granting a motion for temporary injunction. The State argues
that the district court erred in its analysis and asks us to dissolve the temporary
injunction. Although the district court discussed several considerations when
deciding whether to grant the temporary injunction, both the district court in its
order and the parties in their briefs focus on whether Planned Parenthood can
show a “likelihood of success on the merits.” Max 100 L.C. v. Iowa Realty Co.,
621 N.W.2d 178, 181 (Iowa 2001) (en banc). For a court to enter a temporary
injunction, the parties requesting it must convince the court that they are likely
to succeed at the conclusion of the case after all the evidence is heard. League
of United Latin Am. Citizens of Iowa v. Pate, 950 N.W.2d 204, 208–09 (Iowa 2020)
(per curiam). Temporary injunctions are equitable remedies intended to prevent
irreparable harm from occurring before the court has had a chance to determine
if the alleged legal wrong occurred. Id. at 209. There’s no basis to provide a tem-
porary remedy if a plaintiff cannot show a likelihood of success in ultimately
proving that legal wrong. Id.
Whether Planned Parenthood can show a likelihood of success on the mer-
its depends heavily on the test the court applies to determine whether the statute
infringes a constitutional right. A brief review of our court’s recent opinions in-
volving challenges to abortion restrictions sets the stage for our analysis.
8
A.
In 2015, we addressed a challenge to an administrative rule that restricted
“telemedicine abortions” by requiring physicians to perform a physical examina-
tion on pregnant patients before providing an abortion and to be physically pre-
sent with them when an abortion drug is administered. See Planned Parenthood
of the Heartland, Inc. v. Iowa Bd. of Med. (PPH 2015), 865 N.W.2d 252, 253 (Iowa
2015). Under the “undue burden” test created in Planned Parenthood of South-
eastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, federal law at the time prohibited abortion re-
strictions that had “the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the
path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.” 505 U.S. 833, 877–79
(1992) (plurality opinion). We made no determination in PPH 2015 whether the
Iowa Constitution provided an independent right to obtain an abortion, accepting
instead the Iowa Board of Medicine’s concession that any state constitutional
right was “coextensive with the right available under the United States Consti-
tution.” 865 N.W.2d at 254. Applying the federal undue burden standard, we
held that the statute violated due process. Id. at 269.
In 2018, the legislature passed a statute prohibiting abortion “when it has
been determined that the unborn child has a detectable fetal heartbeat, unless,
in the physician’s reasonable medical judgment,” one of several exceptions ap-
plies. 2018 Iowa Acts ch. 1132, § 4 (codified at Iowa Code § 146C.2(2) (2019)).
Planned Parenthood filed a petition for declaratory judgment and for an injunc-
tion to prevent enforcement of the statute. The State stipulated to the temporary
injunction, but it continued to litigate the underlying constitutional issues, ar-
guing in a motion to dismiss that the Iowa Constitution did not protect a right
to abortion.
While that motion awaited a ruling in the district court, we issued an opin-
ion in a different case challenging the constitutionality of a separate statute that
9
imposed a seventy-two-hour waiting period between appointments with a physi-
cian before the physician could perform an abortion. See Planned Parenthood of
the Heartland v. Reynolds ex rel. State (PPH 2018), 915 N.W.2d 206, 212 (Iowa
2018). In determining the type of right at issue—and thus the constitutional
standard of review for the challenged statute—we held that abortion was a fun-
damental right under the Iowa Constitution. Id. at 237. We applied the test as-
sociated with fundamental rights—the “strict scrutiny” test—to the seventy-two-
hour waiting period and held that the statute violated both the due process and
equal protection clauses of the Iowa Constitution. Id. at 241–244, 244–46. Two
justices dissented. Id. at 246 (Mansfield, J., dissenting, joined by Waterman, J.).
The dissent argued that declaring abortion a fundamental right under the Iowa
Constitution lacked both a textual and historical basis. Id. at 246–47. The dis-
sent would have applied Casey’s undue burden standard (the federal standard
at the time) in analyzing the constitutionality of the waiting period statute. Id. at
254.
In the wake of PPH 2018, the State withdrew its motion to dismiss, and
Planned Parenthood moved for summary judgment. In January 2019, the district
court applied strict scrutiny and concluded that the original fetal heartbeat law
violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Iowa Constitution.
The district court granted Planned Parenthood’s motion for summary judgment
and entered a permanent injunction preventing the state from enforcing the stat-
ute. The State did not appeal at that time.
In June 2020, the legislature enacted a different waiting period statute
that imposed a shorter duration—twenty-four hours—between appointments
with a physician before obtaining an abortion. See PPH 2022, 975 N.W.2d at 718.
Planned Parenthood promptly sued and sought a temporary injunction to block
enforcement of the statute. Id. at 719. The district court applied PPH 2018’s strict
10
scrutiny standard and determined that the twenty-four-hour waiting period re-
quirement was unconstitutional. Id. at 720.
On appeal, we reconsidered PPH 2018’s holding that abortion was a
fundamental right. Id. at 735–36. We noted that other state courts that had
recognized a right to abortion under the due process clause of their state
constitutions had “overwhelmingly found that the right . . . is no broader than
the federal right (if it exists at all).” Id. at 738. We concluded that nothing in the
text of Iowa’s Constitution—whether in the due process clause or elsewhere—
refers to or includes protection for abortion. Id. at 739–40. And we observed that
nothing in our state’s historical treatment of abortion, which included outright
bans under a series of laws dating to the state’s founding, established abortion
as a fundamental right. Id. at 740–41. We thus declared abortion was not a
fundamental right under the due process clause of Iowa’s Constitution,
overruling PPH 2018. Id. at 741, 744. Two justices dissented from this part of
the opinion. Id. at 750 (Christensen, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in
part); id. at 756 (Appel, J., dissenting).
But no majority formed in PPH 2022 regarding the appropriate standard
of review to apply on remand. See id. at 744–45 (plurality opinion). A three-justice
plurality noted that the State did not take a position on what test should replace
the strict scrutiny standard. Id. Concluding that “we should not go where the
parties do not ask us to go,” the plurality left this question open for the parties
to litigate further. Id. at 745. The plurality also noted that an important abortion
case currently before the United States Supreme Court could determine the
undue burden test’s fate in federal constitutional analysis and could provide
insight relevant to our consideration of the issue. Id. at 745–46. Two justices who
joined the majority opinion overturning PPH 2018 dissented from the plurality
opinion on this point, arguing that our precedents required adoption of the
11
rational basis test. Id. at 749 (McDermott, J., concurring in part and dissenting
in part, joined by McDonald, J.).
One week after we decided PPH 2022, the United States Supreme Court
decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215 (2022). In Dobbs,
the Supreme Court overruled Casey and the undue burden standard under the
Federal Constitution. Id. at 231. It held that abortion is not a fundamental right
and, as a result, abortion restrictions challenged under the Federal Due Process
Clause are subject only to rational basis review. Id. at 300.
On the heels of PPH 2022 and Dobbs, the State moved in the district court
to dissolve the permanent injunction entered in January 2019 that barred en-
forcement of the original fetal heartbeat law. The State argued that Dobbs and
PPH 2022 had produced a substantial change in the law and that no legal basis
remained to keep the injunction in place. The district court concluded that it
lacked authority to dissolve the injunction, noting that several years had elapsed
since the judgment had been entered without an appeal. It further held that even
if it had the authority to act, the undue burden test applied, and the fetal heart-
beat statute failed this test. The district court thus denied the State’s motion to
dissolve the permanent injunction. In the State’s appeal, we deadlocked 3–3,
which affirmed the district court’s ruling by operation of law and kept the in-
junction in place. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Reynolds ex rel.
State, No. 22–2036, 2023 WL 4635932 (Iowa June 16, 2023) (mem.); see Iowa
Code § 602.4107.
Governor Reynolds’s call for the special legislative session, as described
earlier, soon followed, resulting in the enactment of the new fetal heartbeat stat-
ute at issue in this appeal. See 2023 Iowa Acts ch. 1, §§ 1–2 (codified at Iowa
Code §§ 146E.1, .2 (20232024)).
12
B.
In navigating the unsettled terrain regarding the level of scrutiny to apply
in this case, the district court looked principally to PPH 2022. It rejected the
State’s argument that because PPH 2022 held abortion is not a fundamental
right, rational basis review is required under our precedents. The district court
examined the differing viewpoints expressed in PPH 2022’s plurality opinion and
partial dissent, noting that the plurality did not adopt the partial dissent’s pro-
posal for rational basis review and the plurality’s statement that for the time
being “the Casey undue burden test we applied in PPH [2015] remains the gov-
erning standard.” 975 N.W.2d at 716.
The district court thus applied the undue burden test as the operative
standard and concluded that Planned Parenthood had shown a likelihood of suc-
cess on its claim that the fetal heartbeat statute violates the due process clause
of the Iowa Constitution. After finding in favor of Planned Parenthood on this
point, the district court did not analyze Planned Parenthood’s separate argument
that the statute violated the inalienable rights clause in article I, § 1 of the Iowa
Constitution, nor did it analyze Planned Parenthood’s equal protection claim un-
der article I, §§ 1 and 6 of the Iowa Constitution. The district court briefly ad-
dressed two other factors in its injunction analysis—the potential irreparable
harm that may result from failing to enter the temporary injunction, and the
balance of potential harms to each party—and concluded that both weighed in
favor of Planned Parenthood.
III.
A.
Our approach to reviewing constitutional challenges to statutes reflects
important separation of powers considerations. The separation of powers among
13
the branches of government preserves the balance established in the Constitu-
tion to prevent “a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same de-
partment.” The Federalist No. 51, at 349 (James Madison) (Jacob E. Cooke ed.,
1961). The Iowa Constitution vests the legislature with the authority “to make,
alter, and repeal laws and to formulate legislative policy.” In re C.S., 516 N.W.2d
851, 859 (Iowa 1994). This authority includes “the legislature’s broad, inherent
power to pass laws that promote the public health, safety, and welfare.” Gravert
v. Nebergall, 539 N.W.2d 184, 186 (Iowa 1995). The executive power is the au-
thority “to put the laws enacted by the legislature into effect.” In re C.S.,
516 N.W.2d at 859. The judicial power encompasses “the power to decide and
pronounce a judgment” in particular cases. Klouda v. Sixth Jud. Dist. Dep’t of
Corr. Servs., 642 N.W.2d 255, 261 (Iowa 2002). “It is emphatically the province
and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison,
5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803).
The legislature’s power does not extend to lawmaking that violates a con-
stitutional provision. Our constitution provides that it “shall be the supreme law
of the State” and any inconsistent law “shall be void.” Iowa Const. art. XII, § 1.
When a challenged statute encroaches on a constitutional provision, the court
has an “imperative duty” to declare the statute inoperative. McGuire v. Chi., B. &
Q. R. Co., 108 N.W. 902, 905 (Iowa 1906). But a court may not strike down a
statute based on its own disagreement—even deeply held disagreement—with
the public policy advanced in the statute.
A court’s ability to nullify a law depends entirely on whether a law is irrec-
oncilable with a particular provision of the constitution. As we put the point long
ago: “We are not the guardians of the rights of the people of the State unless they
are secured by some constitutional provision which comes within our judicial
14
cognizance. The remedy for unwise or oppressive legislation, within constitu-
tional bounds, is by appeal to the justice and patriotism of the representatives
of the people.” Stewart v. Bd. of Supervisors, 30 Iowa 9, 17 (1870). Legislative
majorities are sometimes dreadfully wrong. But our system nevertheless allows
them to pursue their will without judicial interference unless their actions invade
constitutional protections.
The Iowa Constitution’s due process clause provides that “no person shall
be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Iowa Const.
art. I, § 9. Determining whether a party’s substantive due process rights have
been violated, as claimed in this case, involves a two-step analysis. State v. Laub,
2 N.W.3d 821, 836 (Iowa 2024). “The first step is to ‘identify the nature of the
individual right involved’ and determine whether that right is fundamental.”
State v. Groves, 742 N.W.2d 90, 92 (Iowa 2007) (quoting In re Det. of Cubbage,
671 N.W.2d 442, 446 (Iowa 2003)). “Once we identify the nature of the right, the
second step is to apply the appropriate test.” Id. at 93. “If we determine the right
is fundamental, then we will apply strict scrutiny.” Id. Strict scrutiny requires
us to determine whether the government’s action is narrowly tailored to serve a
compelling government interest. Sanchez v. State, 692 N.W.2d 812, 817 (Iowa
2005). On the other hand, “[i]f we determine a fundamental right is not impli-
cated, we apply a rational basis review.” Groves, 742 N.W.2d at 93. Under the
rational basis test, we determine whether the law is “rationally relate[d] to a le-
gitimate government purpose.” Id.
A fundamental right, as we apply that term in our constitutional analysis,
doesn’t simply mean “important.” King v. State, 818 N.W.2d 1, 26 (Iowa 2012).
“Many important interests,” we have noted, “do not qualify as fundamental
rights.” Id. Some fundamental rights (freedom of speech or the right to trial by
jury, for instance) are expressly enumerated in the text of the Constitution. See
15
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 634–35 (2008). In determining
whether an unenumerated right is fundamental, the alleged right at issue must
be objectively “deeply rooted” in our “history and tradition” and “implicit in the
concept of ordered liberty.” Hensler v. City of Davenport, 790 N.W.2d 569, 581
(Iowa 2010) (quoting Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760, 775 (2003) (plurality
opinion)). Whether abortion is a fundamental right determines the standard of
review we apply.
We answered the question whether abortion is a “fundamental right” in
PPH 2022. See 975 N.W.2d at 740. In that case, we held that obtaining an abor-
tion is not a fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution, expressly overruling
PPH 2018. Id. at 740, 742. We first examined the text of the Iowa Constitution.
Id. We concluded that the text offered “no support for [a] reading of the due pro-
cess clause as providing fundamental protection for abortion.” Id. at 740.
We then analyzed the state’s treatment of abortion throughout its history.
Id. A right to an abortion, as the historical record shows, is not rooted at all in
our state’s history and tradition, let alone “deeply” rooted. See id. at 740–41. The
deep roots that exist show not protection for abortion rights but common law
and statutory prohibitions on abortion from the very beginning through modern
times. Id. Abortion became a crime in Iowa “just six months after the effective
date of the Iowa Constitution—and remained generally illegal until Roe v. Wade[,
410 U.S. 113 (1973),] was decided over one hundred years later.” Id. at 740.
“Historically,” we concluded, “there is no support for abortion as a fundamental
constitutional right in Iowa.” Id.
Planned Parenthood argues that the fact that women’s rights were quite
limited early in our state’s history but expanded over time undercuts the per-
suasive force of the historical evidence prohibiting abortion. Yet as we observed
in PPH 2022, “even as women’s rights expanded, the ban on abortion remained
16
in place until Roe superseded it.” Id. at 741 (citing Iowa Code § 701.1 (1973),
imposing criminal penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment on anyone who
administers a drug or performs a procedure “with intent to produce [a] miscar-
riage of any woman . . . unless such miscarriage shall be necessary to save her
life”). Whether a right to obtain an abortion has deep roots in our state’s history
is an objective inquiry, see Hensler, 790 N.W.2d at 581, and that history supplies
no support for abortion as a fundamental right, PPH 2022, 975 N.W.2d at 740–
41.
As we held in PPH 2022, neither text nor history establishes abortion as a
fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution. Id. at 739–42.
B.
Having determined that the individual right at stake is not a fundamental
right, we turn to the appropriate level of scrutiny. See Groves, 742 N.W.2d at 93.
Since the statute implicates no fundamental right, our precedents would have
us apply the rational basis test. Laub, 2 N.W.3d at 836; King, 818 N.W.2d at 32;
Groves, 742 N.W.2d at 93. Planned Parenthood argues that we should instead
adopt the undue burden test from Casey. It contends that the undue burden
test would better balance the state’s interest in protecting what Roe and Casey
called “fetal life,” and what the law now before us describes as an “unborn child,”
with protecting maternal health and a woman’s liberty interest in deciding
whether to terminate a pregnancy.
In Casey, the Supreme Court reaffirmed several propositions of its holding
in Roe, including that the Constitution protects a right to an abortion before fetal
viability “without undue interference from the State.” 505 U.S. at 846. Casey
further declared that the “State has legitimate interests from the outset of the
pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the fetus,” and
17
that the state may restrict abortions after viability if the abortion regulation con-
tains exceptions for pregnancies endangering the mother’s life or health. Id. Un-
der Casey’s undue burden test, an abortion regulation would be held unconsti-
tutional if “its purpose or effect is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of
a woman seeking an abortion before” viability. Id. at 878. The Casey plurality
abandoned Roe’s “zones of privacy” analysis in favor of a “liberty” interest arising
under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Compare Roe,
410 U.S. at 152, with Casey, 505 U.S. at 846–47.
The Casey dissenters criticized the “inherently standardless nature” of the
undue burden test as permitting judges to inject their own policy preferences
when deciding whether a particular restriction creates an undue burden to get-
ting an abortion. 505 U.S. at 992 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment in part
and dissenting in part). As the dissenters predicted, the undue burden test has
vexed courts trying to apply it. See Dobbs, 597 U.S. at 284–85 (noting that “Ca-
sey has generated a long list of Circuit conflicts” and collecting cases). The undue
burden test requires judges to determine whether an abortion regulation will
“prevent” or “deter” a “significant number of women from obtaining an abortion.”
Casey, 505 U.S. at 893–94. But the test offers no guidance on how much pre-
vention or deterrence will cause an abortion regulation to violate the Constitu-
tion. See Dobbs, 597 U.S. at 284 (“Casey’s ‘line between’ permissible and uncon-
stitutional restrictions ‘has proved to be impossible to draw with precision.’ ”
(quoting Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, 585 U.S. 878, 921 (2018))). An undue
burden standard inevitably leaves courts unable to provide predictability, con-
sistency, or coherence in its application. We already have well-established tiers
of review that we routinely apply when analyzing whether a regulation infringes
constitutional due process rights.
18
Planned Parenthood notes that we have adopted forms of intermediate
scrutiny that are more stringent than rational basis but less stringent than strict
scrutiny when evaluating burdens imposed by election laws and commercial
speech and content-neutral speech regulations. See Democratic Senatorial Cam-
paign Comm. v. Pate, 950 N.W.2d 1, 7 (Iowa 2020) (per curiam); State v. Musser,
721 N.W.2d 734, 743 (Iowa 2006). But the suggestion that an intermediate
standard in these examples somehow supports an intermediate standard for
abortion restrictions quickly falls apart when one considers that voting and free
speech—unlike abortion—are both fundamental rights enumerated in the Fed-
eral and State Constitutions. See U.S. Const. amend. I; id. amend. XIV, § 2; Iowa
Const. art. I, § 7; id. art. II, § 1; see also Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 433
(1992) (noting that voting is a matter of “fundamental significance under our
constitutional structure” (quoting Ill. State Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers
Party, 440 U.S. 173, 184 (1979))). Intermediate scrutiny for election laws, for
instance, allows courts to balance competing constitutional requirements of en-
suring fair and orderly elections against the right to vote. Abortion is not a fun-
damental right under either the United States or Iowa Constitutions, Dobbs,
597 U.S. at 300; PPH 2022, 975 N.W.2d at 740, and thus the legislature gener-
ally maintains the authority to regulate it like other activities that fall within the
legislature’s police powers.
Subjecting all laws that involve legislative line-drawing—which is virtually
all laws—to heightened scrutiny would severely hamstring the legislature’s abil-
ity to carry out its role in our democratic process. Our tiers of scrutiny strike a
balance between deferring to the legislative process and protecting constitutional
rights by holding laws that draw distinctions involving fundamental rights to
heightened scrutiny. “Our role,” as we have said, “is to decide whether constitu-
tional lines were crossed, not to sit as a superlegislature rethinking policy
19
choices of the elected branches.” AFSCME Iowa Council 61 v. State, 928 N.W.2d
21, 26 (Iowa 2019).
Stated simply, we can find no principled basis under our due process prec-
edents to apply the heightened scrutiny of an undue burden test to abortion.
And it would appear we’re not alone in our judgment; in the time since Dobbs
discarded Casey’s undue burden standard, no state appears to have applied the
undue burden test to a law restricting abortion based on a state constitution’s
due process clause.
We thus will apply the rational basis test. “Under a rational basis analysis,
a statute is constitutional if we find a ‘reasonable fit between the government
interest and the means utilized to advance that interest.’ ” Groves, 742 N.W.2d
at 93 (quoting State v. Hernandez–Lopez, 639 N.W.2d 226, 238 (Iowa 2002)).
Rational basis review, while not toothless, presents a “very deferential standard.”
AFSCME Iowa Council 61, 928 N.W.2d at 32 (quoting NextEra Energy Res. LLC v.
Iowa Utils. Bd., 815 N.W.2d 30, 46 (Iowa 2012)). A party challenging a statute
under the rational basis test bears “a heavy burden” to show that the state’s
action is unconstitutional. Racing Ass’n of Cent. Iowa v. Fitzgerald, 675 N.W.2d
1, 8 (Iowa 2004). Statutes are presumed constitutional, and we will not declare
a law unconstitutional under the rational basis test unless it “clearly, palpably,
and without doubt infringe[s]” a constitutional right. Residential & Agric. Advi-
sory Comm., LLC v. Dyersville City Council, 888 N.W.2d 24, 50 (Iowa 2016) (al-
teration in original) (quoting Racing Ass’n of Cent. Iowa, 675 N.W.2d at 8).
Planned Parenthood argues that we should not reconsider the constitu-
tional standard in this appeal at all because the parties have not had a chance
to fully develop the record. But under the rational basis test, the state “is not
required or expected to produce evidence to justify its legislative action.” Ames
Rental Prop. Ass’n v. City of Ames, 736 N.W.2d 255, 259 (Iowa 2007). A court
20
need only find a “realistically conceivable” basis that the statute advances a le-
gitimate state interest. Hensler, 790 N.W.2d at 584 (emphasis omitted) (quoting
Miller v. Boone Cnty. Hosp., 394 N.W.2d 776, 779 (Iowa 1986) (en banc)). “[T]hat
basis need not be supported by evidence in the traditional sense . . . .” Garrison
v. New Fashion Pork LLP, 977 N.W.2d 67, 86 (Iowa 2022).
The State offers several interests that it asserts are advanced by the fetal
heartbeat statute, each of which was recognized by the United States Supreme
Court as a legitimate state interest in Dobbs: “respect for and preservation of
prenatal life at all stages of development”; “protection of maternal health and
safety”; “elimination of particularly gruesome or barbaric medical procedures”;
“preservation of the integrity of the medical profession”; “mitigation of fetal pain”;
and “prevention of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability.”
597 U.S. at 301. The state’s interest in protecting the unborn can be traced to
Iowa’s earliest days. State v. Moore, 25 Iowa 128, 135–36 (1868).
Every ground the State identifies is a legitimate interest for the legislature
to pursue, and the restrictions on abortion in the fetal heartbeat statute are ra-
tionally related to advancing them. As a result, Planned Parenthood’s substan-
tive due process challenge fails. The district court thus erred in granting the
temporary injunction.
C.
An appellate court may affirm a district court ruling on any ground urged
by the successful party in the district court and again on appeal, even if the
district court didn’t rely on that ground in its ruling. Veatch v. City of Waverly,
858 N.W.2d 1, 7 (Iowa 2015). Planned Parenthood argued in the district court
that the fetal heartbeat statute violated both the due process clause and the
inalienable rights clause. The district court granted the temporary injunction
based solely on the due process argument. But Planned Parenthood presents no
21
inalienable rights clause argument on appeal, urging instead that the district
court should rule on it first with a more developed record. Because Planned
Parenthood forgoes its inalienable rights argument on appeal, we decline to con-
sider it as an alternative basis to affirm the temporary injunction. We similarly
decline to consider Planned Parenthood’s claim that the statute violates equal
protection, as Planned Parenthood presented no such argument in the injunc-
tion proceeding in the district court or in this appeal.
IV.
The State makes two other arguments—challenges to standing and ripe-
ness—seeking not merely to reverse the temporary injunction order but to dis-
miss the case entirely as improperly brought. It argues that abortion providers
such as Planned Parenthood should not be allowed to bring constitutional claims
on behalf of women seeking abortions and that permitting them to do so distorts
traditional principles of standing. The State also argues that Planned
Parenthood’s lawsuit is not ripe for review because Planned Parenthood filed it
before Governor Reynolds signed the fetal heartbeat statute into law, meaning
that there was not yet any law to challenge. The district court rejected both ar-
guments. We agree with the district court that Planned Parenthood has standing
and that its claims are ripe for review.
A.
Standing refers to a party’s right to bring a legal action. DuTrac Cmty.
Credit Union v. Hefel, 893 N.W.2d 282, 289 (Iowa 2017). To demonstrate stand-
ing, a “party must (1) have a specific personal or legal interest in the litigation
and (2) be injuriously affected.” Id. (quoting Citizens for Responsible Choices v.
City of Shenandoah, 686 N.W.2d 470, 475 (Iowa 2004)). Although the injury can-
not be merely speculative, “a likelihood or possibility of injury” may be enough
to establish an injury-in-fact that is sufficiently concrete and imminent to create
22
standing. Iowa Bankers Ass’n v. Iowa Credit Union Dep’t, 335 N.W.2d 439, 445
(Iowa 1983).
Although abortion providers have no constitutional right to perform abor-
tions, see Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Reynolds, 962 N.W.2d 37,
56 (Iowa 2021), they nevertheless suffer an injury-in-fact when a statute forbids
them from providing abortion procedures, Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106,
112–113 (1976). Violations of the fetal heartbeat statute could result in revoca-
tion of abortion providers’ medical licenses and fines of up to $10,000. See Iowa
Code § 148.6(1)–(2)(c); id. § 272C.3(2). Planned Parenthood has demonstrated an
injury-in-fact under our standing precedents.
The district court also concluded that Planned Parenthood has third-party
standing in this case through the pregnant women it serves. Although a party
generally may assert only its own rights and not the claims of a third party who
isn’t before the court, our precedents provide several exceptions to this general
rule. Iowa Movers & Warehousemen’s Ass’n v. Briggs, 237 N.W.2d 759, 772 (Iowa
1976) (en banc). These exceptions include (1) “where a peculiar relationship be-
tween the party and the rightholder makes such allowance appropriate,”
(2) “where the rightholder has difficulty asserting [its] own rights,” and
(3) “where, unless assertion of the third person’s rights were permitted, those
rights would be diluted and adversely affected.” Id.We agree with the district court that Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit satis-
fies our prudential rules permitting third-party standing in this case. The rela-
tionship between abortion providers and women seeking abortions weighs in fa-
vor of third-party standing. See Singleton, 428 U.S. at 117 (finding providers
“uniquely qualified to litigate the constitutionality of the State’s interference
with” abortion). Further, under the time limitations established in the fetal heart-
23
beat statute, women seeking an abortion might reasonably have difficulty assert-
ing their own rights in a manner enabling timely adjudication of the important
constitutional questions presented in this case. Under these facts, we find that
Planned Parenthood satisfies third-party standing requirements. We thus affirm
the district court’s ruling rejecting the State’s standing challenge.
B.
We turn to the State’s ripeness argument. “A case is ripe for adjudication
when it presents an actual, present controversy, as opposed to one that is merely
hypothetical or speculative.” Barker v. Iowa Dep’t of Pub. Safety, 922 N.W.2d
581, 590 (Iowa 2019) (quoting State v. Bullock, 638 N.W.2d 728, 734 (Iowa
2002)). The ripeness doctrine prevents courts from adjudicating cases prema-
turely and thus “from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over ad-
ministrative policies . . . until an administrative decision has been formalized
and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties.” Id. (quoting State
v. Wade, 757 N.W.2d 618, 627 (Iowa 2008)). Two questions drive our ripeness
analysis in this situation: (1) whether the issues are “sufficiently focused so as
to permit judicial resolution without further factual development” and
(2) whether postponing judicial action would impose a hardship on any party.
Iowa Coal Min. Co. v. Monroe County, 555 N.W.2d 418, 432 (Iowa 1996).
The legislature passed the fetal heartbeat statute on July 11, 2023. Gov-
ernor Reynolds issued a statement that same day expressing her intent to sign
the bill on July 14. Planned Parenthood filed its petition and motion for tempo-
rary injunction on July 12. With Governor Reynolds having called the special
legislative session that passed the fetal heartbeat bill and announced the date
and location that she would sign the bill, its imminent enactment was all but
certain. The fetal heartbeat bill stated that it would become effective immediately.
Planned Parenthood presented sufficient evidence that it would suffer hardship,
24
including potential fines and license revocations, if the district court failed to act
right away. The district court, for its part, issued the order granting the tempo-
rary injunction on July 17, three days after the statute became effective.
On these facts, we find no error in the district court’s conclusion that the
case was ripe and thus affirm the district court’s ruling rejecting the State’s ripe-
ness challenge.
V.
The district court granted the temporary injunction after concluding that
Planned Parenthood was likely to succeed in its constitutional challenge under
an undue burden standard. Our holding today—applying rational basis as the
constitutional test—undermines the rationale for the district court’s ruling. Un-
der the rational basis test, Planned Parenthood cannot show a likelihood of suc-
cess on the merits of its substantive due process challenge. We thus hold that
Planned Parenthood is not entitled to a temporary injunction blocking enforce-
ment of the fetal heartbeat statute. We reverse the order granting the temporary
injunction and remand the case for the district court to dissolve the temporary
injunction and continue with further proceedings.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
McDonald, Oxley, and May, JJ., join this opinion. Christensen, C.J., files
a dissenting opinion, in which Mansfield and Waterman, JJ., join. Mansfield, J.,
files a dissenting opinion, in which Christensen, C.J., and Waterman, J., join.
25
#23–1145, Planned Parenthood v. Reynolds
CHRISTENSEN, Chief Justice (dissenting).
Today, our court’s majority strips Iowa women of their bodily autonomy by
holding that there is no fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy under our
state constitution. I cannot stand by this decision. The majority’s rigid approach
relies heavily on the male-dominated history and traditions of the 1800s, all the
while ignoring how far women’s rights have come since the Civil War era. It is a
bold assumption to think that the drafters of our state constitution intended for
their interpretation to stand still while we move forward as a society. Instead, we
should interpret our constitution through a modern lens that recognizes how our
lives have changed with the passage of time.
Historically, “the men in the Iowa General Assembly enacted statutes re-
lated to abortion, and the men reelected the representatives, and the men served
on the courts, while the women stayed home.” Planned Parenthood of the Heart-
land, Inc. v. Reynolds ex rel. State (PPH 2022), 975 N.W.2d 710, 793 (Iowa 2022)
(Appel, J., dissenting). In sum, generations of women in Iowa faced multiple lay-
ers of exclusion and discrimination. Not only did women have no say in the draft-
ing of our state constitution, but they had no input in the statutes being enacted
in the state legislature and no ability to vote for the elected officials responsible
for these statutes. “Consequently, the common law addressing abortion devel-
oped in a society where any rule elevating the continuation of the growth of a
fetus was largely untempered by consideration of the impact on the woman who
bore the brunt of the rule.” Allegheny Reprod. Health Ctr. v. Pa. Dep’t of Hum.
Servs., 309 A.3d 808, 906–07 (Pa. 2024). So is it any wonder why Iowa is not
flush with legal history demonstrating that a medical procedure specific to
women is a deeply rooted part of our state’s tradition?
26
Women are human beings in their own right, worthy of the same freedoms,
privileges, and protections as men. Yet, women have not consistently possessed
the same collection of rights granted to men throughout Iowa’s history. Instead,
society viewed women as little more than an extension of the men in their lives
when our state constitution was drafted and for generations to come.1
There were no women members of the Iowa constitutional conventions,
which occurred in 1844, 1846, and 1857, and no women members of the legis-
lature during that period.2 While African-American males received the right to
vote when the states ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Con-
stitution in 1870, women of all races had to wait until 1919 for that right.3 It was
not until 1998 that the citizens of Iowa voted to expressly include women in the
language of the Iowa Constitution’s inalienable rights clause. See Iowa Const.
amend. 45.
Of course, women now play a far greater role in shaping society than they
did in the middle of the nineteenth century. The political actors responsible for
the statute at issue—Iowa Code section 146E.2 (2023)—include significant fe-
male representation in leadership roles in both the general assembly and the
governor’s office, along with a female attorney general whose office is tasked with
defending the statute. The overwhelming majority of these women have spent
1See, e.g., Zerfing v. Mourer, 2 Greene 520, 521–22 (Iowa 1850) (affirming the defendant’s
liability in a trespass action for seducing and impregnating the plaintiff’s daughter); Iowa State
Univ., Women’s Suffrage in Iowa [hereinafter Women’s Suffrage in Iowa],
https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/timeline/ [https://perma.cc/B3WB-WAJR]; see also Bradwell v.
Illinois, 83 U.S. 130, 141 (1872) (Bradley, J., concurring) (“[T]he civil law, as well as nature her-
self, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and
woman. . . . So firmly fixed was this sentiment in the founders of the common law that it became
a maxim of the system of jurisprudence that a woman had no legal existence separate from her
husband, who was regarded as her head and representative in the social state . . . .”).
2See Women’s Suffrage in Iowa.
3See Nat’l Women’s Hist. Museum, Timeline: Woman Suffrage Timeline (Apr. 12, 2018),
https://www.womenshistory.org/exhibits/timeline-woman-suffrage [https://perma.cc/H9L7-
GPEN].
27
most—if not all—of their lives with the ability to choose whether to continue a
pregnancy under the United States Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v.
Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 153 (1973). And as a female serving as the chief executive
officer of the state’s judicial branch and only the third woman appointed to the
Iowa Supreme Court, I know all too well how far women have come and the ef-
forts it took to achieve this progress. But we didn’t come this far to say, “Our
work is done.”
Unfortunately, this statute—and the majority’s decision allowing it to take
effect—not only brings that progress to a halt but also takes a giant step back-
ward. Despite the great strides men and women have made for women’s equality
in the decades since the drafting of our state constitution, women “are once again
relegated to their traditional (and outdated) roles as only child-bearers and moth-
ers,” “forced to live their twenty-first century lives by nineteenth century stand-
ards and mores.” Planned Parenthood Great Nw. v. State, 522 P.3d 1132, 1235
(Idaho 2023) (Stegner, J., dissenting). This law is contrary to the rights afforded
under the Iowa Constitution. Accordingly, I dissent from the majority’s decision
and would affirm the district court’s temporary injunction, finding what’s re-
ferred to as “the fetal heartbeat bill” unconstitutional. In doing so, I also join
Justice Mansfield’s dissent in full, including his constitutional analysis.
I. Women Have the Right to Decide Whether to Continue Their Pregnancy.
In 2018, our court held that the decision to end a pregnancy is implicit in
the concept of ordered liberty and thus a fundamental right under the due pro-
cess clause of the Iowa Constitution. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v.
Reynolds ex rel. State (PPH 2018), 915 N.W.2d 206, 237–38 (Iowa 2018). Accord-
ingly, any regulations affecting this right were subject to strict scrutiny. Id. at
238. Four years later, and with a significant change in the makeup of our court,
we overruled that 2018 decision with a majority of the court concluding “that the
28
Iowa Constitution is not the source of a fundamental right to an abortion neces-
sitating a strict scrutiny standard of review for regulations affecting that right.”
PPH 2022, 975 N.W.2d at 716.
At the time, I declined to weigh in on the merits of that debate on stare
decisis grounds. See id. at 750–56 (Christensen, C.J., concurring in part and
dissenting in part). I concluded that no special justification “warrant[ed] such a
swift departure from the court’s 2018 decision,” so I would have applied strict
scrutiny review to analyze the twenty-four-hour waiting period at issue in line
with our 2018 holding. Id. at 750. Putting aside whether stare decisis should
have constrained our court from overturning that 2018 decision, I acknowledge
that the 2018 decision is no longer controlling precedent. But part of the reason
this case is before us is that no majority of the court agreed on the appropriate
standard of review to apply to abortion regulations in our 2022 decision. Id. at
744–45 (majority opinion).
This time around, even Planned Parenthood has abandoned its call for
strict scrutiny review, arguing instead that “[a]n intermediate level of scrutiny is
appropriate in the abortion context because of the importance of balancing the
different interests at stake.” Meanwhile, the State advocates for rational basis
review of abortion regulations. Therefore, I see no reason to re-litigate our 2018
and 2022 decisions to consider whether abortion regulations are subject to strict
scrutiny because neither party is asking for that. Id. at 745 (“[W]e should not go
where the parties do not ask us to go.”).
I join Justice Mansfield’s dissent and agree that—at the very least—we
should “evaluate state regulations and restrictions on abortions before the six-
teenth week using intermediate scrutiny and the Casey undue burden stand-
ard.” It is painfully apparent to me that the majority misapprehends the nature
29
of the liberty at issue here. It is not whether abortion, with the polarizing reac-
tions it evokes, is a fundamental right but rather whether individuals have the
fundamental right to make medical decisions affecting their health and bodily
integrity in partnership with their healthcare provider free from government in-
terference. I also write separately to highlight some of my qualms with the ma-
jority opinion and the impractical exceptions to the statute that are likely to gen-
erate new constitutional challenges.
A. Iowa’s History and Tradition Surrounding Abortion is Not Clear-
Cut. By exclusively relying on the text of our constitution that was adopted in
1857 and our state’s history and tradition to conclude that abortion is not a
fundamental right, the majority perpetuates the gendered hierarchies of old
when women were second-class citizens. Justice Mansfield’s dissent accurately
details the oppression that women in Iowa faced for much of our history, while
the majority glosses over this part of our state’s history and tradition. With a full
account of our early treatment of women in Iowa and their utter absence in de-
cision-making roles, it is not surprising that Iowa lacks a rich history and tradi-
tion of supporting abortion. The majority’s approach provides no opportunity to
overcome or repudiate this history.
Nonetheless, the majority oversimplifies Iowa’s history and tradition re-
garding abortion by concluding that it provides no support for abortion as a fun-
damental right under the state constitution. Despite Iowa’s history of laws crim-
inalizing or restricting abortion, women in Iowa have long had the ability to ter-
minate a pregnancy to preserve the life of the mother. This dates back to Iowa’s
time as a territory, when the 1843 territorial law banned the “administ[ration] to
any woman, pregnant with a child, any medicine, drug, or substance whatever,
or shall employ any other means with intent thereby to destroy such child, and
thereby cause its death, unless the same shall be necessary to preserve the life
30
of the mother.” Iowa Rev. Stat. ch. 49, § 10 (Terr. 1843) (emphasis added.) And,
consistent with the treatment of women at the time, the motivation for criminal-
izing abortion was rooted in sexism, as “[t]he leading advocate of criminalization,
Dr. Horatio Storer and his colleagues, vigorously resisted the entry of women
into the medical profession.” PPH 2022, 975 N.W.2d at 796 (Appel, J., dissent-
ing). Yet, a woman in Iowa had at least a limited ability to end her pregnancy
even at a time when she “had little or no say about her body and her children,
her property, where she lived, her civic duties, her opportunities, her career, her
dress—indeed her life.” Okla. Call for Reprod. Just. v. Drummond, 526 P.3d 1123,
1135 (Okla. 2023) (per curiam) (Kauger, J., concurring).
For decades, Iowa continued to make an exception to its abortion laws for
the life of the mother. See Iowa Code § 701.1 (1966) (criminalizing “any person,
with intent to produce the miscarriage of any woman, willfully administer to her
any drug or substance whatever, or, with such intent, use any instrument or
other means whatever, unless such miscarriage shall be necessary to save her
life” (emphasis added)). We also gave physicians deference in determining
whether an abortion was necessary under the exception, holding that a physi-
cian who performs the procedure “is entitled to the presumption of correct judg-
ment and good faith, thereby falling under the therapeutic exception.” State v.
Abodeely, 179 N.W.2d 347, 354 (Iowa 1970).
As I will explain later, the statute at issue today does not give physicians
this same professional latitude in their decision-making. Nor does it give many
pregnant women any meaningful opportunity to terminate a pregnancy when it
threatens their health or ability to carry a child to term in the future. In short,
although the right was limited, Iowa’s history and traditions certainly, at a min-
imum, support a woman’s right to obtain an abortion to save her life. The ma-
jority ignores this aspect of our history altogether.
31
Moreover, the majority’s conclusion too heavily weighs the absence of any
text in our state constitution referring to, or including, abortion. Other proce-
dures affecting bodily integrity and medical care that are not specifically men-
tioned in our constitution include organ transplants and blood transfusions.
Like abortion, some religions oppose or ban these medical practices, but it is
difficult to imagine the State arguing “that an individual’s right to make
health-care decisions regarding [organ transplants or blood transfusions are]
subject to a government ban because they are not specifically enumerated in our
state constitution—or because some religions find them objectionable.” Planned
Parenthood S. Atl. v. State, 882 S.E.2d 770, 804 (S.C. 2023) (Beatty, C.J., con-
curring).
On a related note, some may find this abortion ban objectionable on reli-
gious grounds. Those include Iowans of Jewish faith, who may have a sincerely
held religious belief in their right to terminate a pregnancy after a fetal heartbeat
is detected. The Court of Appeals of Indiana recently affirmed an injunction halt-
ing a similar abortion law under the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act
(RFRA) because the state failed to show “its claimed compelling interest in pro-
tecting the potential for life is satisfied by denying [Jewish] Plaintiffs’ religious-
based exception” given the statute’s other exceptions for situations involving
rape, incest, fetal abnormalities, and medical emergencies. Individual Members
of Med. Licensing Bd. of Ind. v. Anonymous Plaintiff 1, 233 N.E.3d 416, 455
(Ind. Ct. App. 2024). Like Indiana’s law, Iowa’s newly enacted RFRA law triggers
strict scrutiny and poses related legal issues. See 2024 Iowa Acts ch. 1003, § 4
(to be codified at Iowa Code § 675.2 (2025)).
Finally, the majority’s decision raises concerns about the stability of other
rights we consider fundamental. Our “precedents about bodily autonomy, sexual
and familial relations, and procreation are all interwoven—all part of the fabric
32
of our constitutional law, and because that is so, of our lives.” Dobbs v. Jackson
Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215, 378 (2022) (Breyer, J., dissenting). Conse-
quently, today’s ruling casts doubt on the stability of rights like contraception,
interracial marriage, and same-sex marriage should constitutional challenges to
these rights come before us.
Same-sex marriage, for example, was historically forbidden in Iowa until
our court held that a state statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a
man and a woman violated the Iowa Constitution in 2009. Varnum v. Brien,
763 N.W.2d 862, 906–07 (Iowa 2009); see also Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S.
644, 675 (2015) (“The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the
fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them.”).
“[T]ime brings developments that our founders could not have contemplated
. . . .” Planned Parenthood Great Nw., 522 P.3d at 1215 (Zahn, J., dissenting).
While I agree that we should look to Iowa’s history and tradition to determine the
framers’ intent and guide our analysis, the rights of Iowans did not freeze once
our state constitution took effect. Today’s decision risks limiting our interpreta-
tion to conditions as they existed in the mid-19th century, eliminating rights
from our constitution in the process.
B. The Statute’s Exceptions Authorizing Abortion in Certain Circum-
stances Are Unattainable for Many Pregnant Women and Girls. While the
statute outlines exceptions that allow for abortions in situations involving rape,
incest, certain fetal abnormalities incompatible with life, miscarriages, or medi-
cal emergencies, they are crafted in such a way that the application rings hollow.
See Iowa Code § 146E.2. Frankly, in many of these situations, they serve as an-
other example of how this statute prioritizes the unborn over the living, placing
pregnant women in grave harm in the process. Although the majority opinion
rejects a facial challenge to the overall statute, it does not and could not close
33
the door to “as applied” challenges, including equal protection claims by individ-
ual women harmed as these problematic exceptions go into effect.
In discussing these exceptions, I recognize that the parties did not have
the benefit of the Iowa Board of Medicine’s (Board) rules on this statute during
the briefing stage because the Board was still in the rulemaking process. Those
rules have since been adopted, and while they illuminate some aspects of the
exceptions, we are still left with many questions and concerns. One important
yet unclear rule is the potential discipline a physician faces for performing an
abortion on someone who does not qualify for one of these exceptions, as the
rule simply states that failure to comply with the rules or statute “may constitute
grounds for discipline.” Iowa Admin. Code r. 653–13.17(5). But this is clear: the
potential disciplinary options at the Board’s disposal can be both career-ending
and severe.4
It is important to keep in mind the State’s proclaimed interests for this
statute when reading the abortion exceptions. Primarily, the State contends the
statute serves its “vital interest in protecting unborn human life at all stages of
development.” To a lesser degree, it also mentions the “protection of maternal
health and safety,” “elimination of particularly gruesome or barbaric medical
procedures,” “preservation of the integrity of the medical profession,” “mitigation
of fetal pain,” and “preservation of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or
disability” as other legitimate interests in protecting life, both born and unborn.
(Quoting Dobbs, 597 U.S. at 301.)
It takes little effort to understand how the statute’s exceptions fail to fur-
ther many of these proclaimed interests, regardless of whether we classify them
4The potential disciplinary options available to the Board include the revocation or sus-
pension of a physician’s medical license, a civil penalty up to $10,000, and even a criminal pen-
alty that is a class “D” felony. See Iowa Code § 147.55; id. § 148.6.
34
as legitimate, important, or compelling. That is true even for the interest that the
State stresses most—the “vital interest in protecting unborn human life at all
stages of development”—because the statute includes exceptions to the abortion
ban after the detection of a fetal heartbeat in certain situations when there is no
threat to the pregnant woman or fetus. And in some instances, the statute’s
exceptions even have the potential to do more harm than good to the lives of the
mother and unborn child.
1. Rape and incest exceptions. The statute attempts to provide exceptions
that allow for abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat when women be-
come pregnant as the result of either rape or incest. See Iowa Code § 146E.1(3).
Suffering through rape or incest is certainly one of the most traumatic things a
person can experience, particularly when it results in pregnancy.5 But the State’s
“exceptions” for these survivors throw significant barriers in front of them by
requiring actions that are unrealistic and unfair.
To terminate a pregnancy that was the result of rape, the rape must be
“reported within forty-five days of the incident to a law enforcement agency or to
a public or private health agency which may include a family physician” so long
as the pregnancy has not reached a “postfertilization age” of “twenty or more
weeks.” Id. §§ 146E.1(3)(a), .2(2)(b). Further, the rules require a physician who
intends to perform an abortion under the rape exception to use the following
information in making a good-faith assessment that the exception applies:
1. The date the sex act that caused the pregnancy occurred.
2. The age of the woman seeking an abortion at the time of
that sex act.
5This statute distinguishes rape from incest, but incest is generally a form of sexual
abuse. We treat it as such under the criminal code, which classifies it as a class “D” felony. See
Iowa Code § 726.2.
35
3. Whether the sex act constituted a rape.
4. Whether the rape was perpetrated against the woman seek-
ing an abortion.
5. If initial reporting was to someone other than the physician
who intends to perform or induce an abortion, the date the rape was
reported to a law enforcement agency, public health agency, private
health agency, or family physician.
Iowa Admin. Code r. 653–13.17(4)(a)(2). The physician may also “require the per-
son providing the information to sign a certification form attesting that the in-
formation is true.” Id. r. 653–13.17(4)(a)(2) (flush language). Nothing in the stat-
ute or rules declares who must make this report, so it is unclear if a credible
secondhand report of rape from a pregnant nonverbal teenager’s mother, for ex-
ample, meets this reporting requirement when the patient either is too distraught
or physically cannot report what happened to legal or medical authorities.
Notably, despite the statute’s use of the term “rape” in the exception, it
does not define that term. See Iowa Code § 146E.1(3)(a). “Rape” is not language
used in our criminal code, which criminalizes “sexual abuse” instead. See Iowa
Code § 709.1. According to the Board’s rules, a “pregnancy is the result of a rape”
when “the pregnancy is the result of conduct that would constitute an offense
under Iowa Code section 709.2, 709.3, 709.4, or 709.4A when perpetrated
against a female, regardless of where the conduct occurred.” Iowa Admin. Code
r. 653–13.17(2) (flush language).
These code sections include sexual abuse in the first degree, sexual abuse
in the second degree, sexual abuse in the third degree, and sexual abuse in the
fourth degree when a healthcare professional is the offender. See Iowa Code
§§ 709.2–.4A. They all discuss ways in which a person commits varying degrees
of sexual abuse, but none of them define “sexual abuse.” That definition is in
36
Iowa Code section 709.1, so physicians will first have to know to read that por-
tion of the Iowa Code before determining whether any rape occurred that meets
the exception. See id. § 709.1. From there, the physician will have to become
well-versed in the four different sexual abuse statutes encompassed in the rule
to determine whether the pregnancy is the result of conduct that would consti-
tute an offense under any of these four statutes. See Iowa Admin. Code
r. 653–13.17(2) (flush language).
Physicians should not have to guess whether the patient’s narrative legally
constitutes “rape” before rendering medical treatment to the patient without fear
of jeopardizing their medical license or career. The degree of sexual abuse is often
baffling to law enforcement and prosecutors. How can we expect medical profes-
sionals to reach these legal conclusions when our own profession often struggles
with making that same determination?
Likewise, the statute’s exception for incest raises questions about how it
applies. That exception allows for termination of a pregnancy that “is the result
of incest which is reported within one hundred forty days of the incident to a law
enforcement agency or to a public or private health agency which may include a
family physician.” Iowa Code § 146E.1(3)(b).6 The 140-day reporting period
amounts to twenty weeks. Under the rules,
“The pregnancy is the result of incest” [when] a sex act occurs
between closely related persons that involves a vaginal penetration
that causes a pregnancy. The closely related persons must be re-
lated, either legitimately or illegitimately, as an ancestor, descend-
ant, brother or sister of the whole or half blood, aunt, uncle, niece,
6Nothing in the statute or the Board’s rules explains why a rape victim only has 45 days
to report her rape while a victim of incest has 140 days to obtain an abortion under the excep-
tions. It makes no difference to the fetus whether the report is made in 45 days or 100 days, but
our legislature saw fit to let a pregnancy conceived through incest progress further along than a
pregnancy conceived through rape before allowing for its abortion.
37
or nephew. For purposes of this rule, a closely related person in-
cludes a stepparent, stepchild, or stepsibling, including siblings
through adoption.7
Iowa Admin. Code r. 653–13.17(2) (flush language) (italicization omitted).
Like the rape exception, it is unclear who is qualified to report this for the
exception to apply, which is concerning because incest often involves child vic-
tims. Once a report is made, the physician intending to perform the abortion
must obtain similar information to that required for the rape exception. Id.
r. 653–13.17(4)(a)(1). The rules do not prescribe how a physician is to obtain the
information required to determine whether the rape or incest exception applies,
though the rape exception states that the physician “may rely on the information
received upon a good-faith assessment that the information is true.” Id.
r. 653–13.17(4)(a)(2) (flush language). This offers little reassurance when disci-
pline for failing to comply with the rules or the statutory requirements can de-
stroy a physician’s medical career.
In reality, if Iowa follows the trend of other states with similar bans, there
will likely be few physicians trained and willing to perform abortions in the state,
even if a physician determines that one of the exceptions applies.8 Statistics from
the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) show that “for the second
year in a row, students graduating from U.S. medical schools this year were less
likely to apply for residency positions in states with abortion bans and other
7The Board’s rule regarding incest lists aunts and uncles who are closely related, but that
appears to exclude aunts, uncles, or other relatives by marriage who are not biologically related
to the victim.
8See, e.g., Julie Rovner & Rachana Pradhan, Medical Residents are Starting to Avoid
States with Abortion Bans, Data Shows, NPR (May 9, 2024, 8:01 AM) [hereinafter Medical Resi-
dents are Starting to Avoid States with Abortion Bans], https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2024/05/09/1250057657/medical-residents-starting-avoid-states-abortion-bans
[https://perma.cc/YNK6-QSUC].
38
significant abortion restrictions.”9 With this statute in place, Iowa certainly falls
within that category of states that ob-gyns will avoid. The AAMC analysis also
reveals “that the number of applicants to OB-GYN residency programs in abor-
tion-ban states dropped by 6.7%, compared with a 0.4% increase in states where
abortion remains legal.”10
Recent medical school graduates are not alone in their decision to avoid
states with strict abortion laws. An August 2022 survey of 1,000 jobseekers in
the United States revealed that one in three jobseekers would not apply to jobs
in states with abortion bans.11 More recently, fifty-one businesses in Texas sub-
mitted an amicus brief to the Texas Supreme Court in support of Texas women
challenging the state’s abortion ban, detailing how the ban is “increasing the cost
of business in Texas, driving away top talent, risking potential future business
coming to the State, and threatening a diverse workforce.”12 They cited research
estimating Texas’s abortion restrictions could cause an economic loss to women
and the state economy of $14.5 billion annually due to a reduction in labor force
participation, earning level, and increasing turnover and time off from work
among women ages fifteen to forty-four years.13 This information does not bode
well for Iowa, considering 34% more of our state’s college-educated workforce
9Medical Residents are Starting to Avoid States with Abortion Bans.
10Medical Residents are Starting to Avoid States with Abortion Bans.
11Jennifer Liu, Turning Down a $300K Job, Deferring Dreams of Austin: How Roe’s End is
Changing Millenials’ Career Plans—and Lives, CNBC (Aug. 18, 2022, 10:04 AM),
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/18/how-roes-end-is-changing-millennials-career-plans-and-
lives.html [https://perma.cc/5FRX-EHDB].
12Brief for Amici Curiae Bumble Inc. and Other Businesses and Businesspeople in Sup-
port of Appellees, 2023 WL 8355790, at *1 (filed Nov. 20, 2023), State v. Zurawski, No. 23–0629,
2024 WL 2787913 (Tex. May 31, 2024), [Brief for Bumble Inc. et al.].
13Brief for Bumble Inc. et al.; see also Erin Weber, Texas Abortion Ban and Other Re-
strictions Cost the State Economy Almost $15 Billion Per Year, Inst. for Women’s Pol’y Rsch.
(Sept. 2, 2021), https://iwpr.org/texas-abortion-ban-and-other-restrictions-cost-the-state-
economy-almost-15-billion-per-year/ [https://perma.cc/X86H-Q35B].
39
leaves the state after graduation than stays here, making us the tenth worst
state at retaining new college graduates according to a 2022 report.14
Perhaps these concerns overshadow an even bigger problem with the rape
and incest exceptions, which is that most sexual assaults go unreported. The
Bureau of Justice Statistics found that only 21.5% of rape or sexual assaults
were reported to police in 2021 and 21.4% in 2022. Alexandra Thompson & Su-
sannah N. Tapp, U.S. Dep’t of Just., Criminal Victimization, 2022 6 tbl.4 (2023),
https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv22.pdf [https://perma.cc/467K-MCYT]. When
victims do report, it is often delayed because the process of reporting “involves
many things that a victim’s [posttraumatic stress disorder] would push them to
avoid, including thinking about the assault [and] detailing the assault.” Jillian
Miller Purdue & Fredrick E. Vars, Time to Heal: Trauma’s Impact on Rape & Sex-
ual Assault Statutes of Limitations, 11 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 125, 139 (2023).
Plus, those seeking incest exceptions face additional obstacles, as they are
often minors whose abusers are family members.15 They risk being kicked out of
their home and ostracized by their family, who may very well support the abuser.
As I have documented before, it is sadly “not uncommon to terminate the paren-
tal rights of parents who continue to deny their child’s sexual abuse and con-
tinue to reside with the child’s abuser.” In re D.D., 955 N.W.2d 186, 198–99 (Iowa
2021) (Christensen, C.J., concurring specially) (collecting cases involving this
situation). Combine these risks with Iowa’s requirement that minors obtain pa-
rental notification or judicial bypass to receive an abortion, and the already
14Erin Murphy, Iowa’s “Brain Drain” Among Worst in U.S., Analysis Shows, The Gazette
(Sept. 22, 2022, 6:38 PM), https://www.thegazette.com/state-government/iowas-brain-drain-
among-worst-in-u-s-analysis-shows/ [https://perma.cc/F4S3-BLMR].
15See, e.g., Elizabeth Chuck, Post-Roe, Exceptions to State Abortion Bans Won’t be Easy
to Acquire, NBC News (Jan. 24, 2022, 12:24 PM), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-
news/post-roe-exceptions-state-abortion-bans-wont-easy-acquire-rcna34986
[https://perma.cc/6CPV-T495].
40
daunting task of reporting the incest to obtain an abortion under the exception
becomes even more challenging. See Iowa Code § 135L.3.
This brings me back to my concerns about the reporting process required
to obtain the exception. Imagine a twelve-year-old girl telling her mother that her
stepfather raped her, resulting in pregnancy. As I have already noted, it is not
uncommon for the mother to choose not to believe her own child or simply choose
to stand by her man. How does a twelve-year-old navigate reporting this on her
own? What twelve-year-old has the knowledge or wherewithal to independently
report rape or incest to either law enforcement or medical professionals? What’s
worse is that the twelve-year-old may not even realize that she was the victim of
a crime because she may live in a household where sexual abuse is sadly nor-
malized. It is an understatement to say that this exception is unrealistic and
unfair for many rape and incest survivors—especially the children among
them—who become pregnant from these crimes.
When women (or young girls) are unable to clear those hurdles and are
forced to carry their abuser’s biological child to term, they encounter new battles.
“The trauma of sexual assault lingers and can prevent victims from effectively
continuing their employment, academic, or other life goals. It can therefore sup-
press economic success and increase the risk of impoverishment for victims of
sexual assault.” Jill C. Engle, Sexual Violence, Intangible Harm, and the Promise
of Transformative Remedies, 79 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1045, 1071 (2022) (footnote
omitted). This does not even address the additional trauma these survivors face
when they are forced into custody battles or required to participate in litigation
to terminate their abuser’s parental rights to the child. See, e.g., Jordan S.
Miceli, Note, The Haunting of Her House: How Virginia Law Punishes Women Who
Become Mothers Through Rape, 78 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. Online 129, 155–58
41
(Dec. 15, 2021) (discussing the harms women face when their rapists assert pa-
rental rights to the child conceived through rape); see also 2016 Iowa Acts
ch. 1046, § 1 (codified at Iowa Code § 232.116(1)(p) (2017)) (authorizing termi-
nation of parental rights since 2016 when “[t]he court finds there is clear and
convincing evidence that the child was conceived as the result of sexual abuse
as defined in section 709.1, and the biological parent against whom the sexual
abuse was perpetrated requests termination of the parental rights of the biolog-
ical parent who perpetrated the sexual abuse”).
Needless to say, these exceptions are fraught with problems. Most prob-
lematic for the State is that nothing in the record shows how it promotes its
professed primary vital interest in protecting unborn life at all stages of develop-
ment. These exceptions, while seemingly favoring the pregnant woman’s inter-
ests over fetal life, are “based on a tragic circumstance rather than risks to the
mother’s physical health” or the desire to protect any fetal life. Individual Mem-
bers of Med. Licensing Bd. of Ind., 233 N.E.3d at 456. “It begs the question, why
does the state abandon its professed primary [vital] interest, the protection of
fetal life, in rape or incest cases?” Planned Parenthood S. Atl., 882 S.E.2d at 800.
The State offers no reason why pregnancies that result from rape or incest
can be terminated after a fetal heartbeat is detected while other pregnancies
must continue. Terminating any of these pregnancies results in the loss of po-
tential life, regardless of how those pregnancies were conceived. See id. The sta-
tus of a woman in either situation is the same: she is pregnant.
2. Medical emergency exception. The statute’s exception authorizing abor-
tions when a pregnant woman is experiencing a medical emergency pits the life
of the mother against the life of the fetus. In doing so, it treats the pregnant
42
woman as little more than a means to an end and ignores the mother’s crucial
role in carrying that potential life to term. That exception allows:
[A]n abortion . . . to preserve the life of the pregnant woman whose
life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical
injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or
arising from the pregnancy, but not including psychological condi-
tions, emotional conditions, familial conditions, or the woman’s age;
or when continuation of the pregnancy will create a serious risk of
substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of
the pregnant woman.
Iowa Code § 146A.1(6)(a) (emphasis added); see also id. § 146E.1(4). It also au-
thorizes abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected after twenty or more weeks
when “in the physician’s reasonable medical judgment the pregnant woman has
a condition which the physician deems a medical emergency” or an “abortion is
necessary to preserve the life of an unborn child.” Id. § 146E.2(2)(b). “ ‘Reasona-
ble medical judgment’ means a medical judgment made by a reasonably prudent
physician who is knowledgeable about the case and the treatment possibilities
with respect to the medical conditions involved.” Id. § 146E.1(6) (italicization
omitted). The Board’s rules offer no additional insight into what constitutes a
“medical emergency” under the exception.
Nationwide, this lack of guidance into what constitutes a life-endangering
medical emergency in states with similar statutes continues to perplex physi-
cians at the expense of the pregnant women seeking their care.16 In Missouri, a
United States Department of Health and Human Services investigation found the
Freeman Health System in Joplin violated federal law when it refused to provide
an abortion for a pregnant woman whose water broke early at seventeen weeks
16See, e.g.,Alice Miranda Ollstein & Megan Messerly, Patients are Being Denied Emer-
gency Abortions. Courts Can Only Do So Much, Politico (April 23, 2024, 5:00 AM),
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/23/doctors-abortion-medical-exemptions-
00153317.
43
of pregnancy even though she was at risk for serious infection and doctors told
her the fetus would not survive.17
In Oklahoma, a woman filed a federal complaint alleging the Oklahoma
Children’s Hospital turned her away when she was seeking an abortion due to
life-threatening pregnancy complications because the ultrasound detected fetal
cardiac activity.18 The pregnant woman—who had a partial molar pregnancy19
and was at risk of bleeding to death if the cysts inside her uterus ruptured—ul-
timately endured a three-hour trip across state lines to Kansas, where she was
able to terminate her failed pregnancy.20
In ongoing litigation surrounding Idaho’s abortion statute, board-certified
ob-gyn Dr. Emily Corrigan gave specific examples of the problems she’s experi-
enced practicing at a Boise hospital under an ambiguous abortion statute that
only protects abortions when they are necessary to prevent the mother’s death.
See United States v. Idaho, 623 F. Supp. 3d 1096, 1105 (D. Idaho 2022), stay
granted, 83 F.4th 1130 (9th Cir. 2023), rev’d, 82 F.4th 1296 (9th Cir.) (mem.)
17Amanda Seitz, Feds: Hospitals That Denied Emergency Abortion Broke the Law, AP
News (May 1, 2023, 5:52 PM), https://apnews.com/article/emergency-abortion-law-hospitals-
kansas-missouri-emtala-2f993d2869fa801921d7e56e95787567 [https://perma.cc/W5UU-
BH2H].
18Carmen Forman, After Being Denied Life-Saving Abortion, Oklahoma Woman Files Hos-
pital Complaint, Oklahoma Voice (Sept. 13, 2023, 5:30 AM), https://oklaho-
mavoice.com/2023/09/13/after-being-denied-life-saving-abortion-oklahoma-woman-files-hos-
pital-complaint/ [https://perma.cc/A4YF-HZEH].
19In partial molar pregnancies, fertilization goes wrong, causing either two sperm to fer-
tilize the same egg or an egg is fertilized by one sperm that later duplicates. Selena Simmons-
Duffin, “I’ll Lose My Family” A Husband’s Dread During an Abortion Ordeal in Oklahoma, NPR (May 1,
2023, 10:44 AM) [“I’ll Lose My Family” A Husband’s Dread During an Abortion Ordeal in Okla-
homa.], https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/01/1172973274/oklahoma-abortion-
ban-exception-life-of-mother-molar-pregnancy [https://perma.cc/DSE5-5YBW]. These pregnancies
carry “a risk of heavy bleeding, infection, and a life-threatening condition called preeclampsia
that can lead to organ failure. There’s also a risk that cancer will develop.” Id.20“I’ll Lose My Family” A Husband’s Dread During an Abortion Ordeal in Oklahoma.
44
(en banc), stay granted, 144 S. Ct. 541 (2004), rev’d sub nom. Moyle v. United
States, 2024 WL 3187605 (June 26, 2004) (per curiam).
Specifically, she discussed her treatment of “three recent patients—all of
whom presented with emergency medical conditions and required an abortion.”
Id. The court summarized the concerns that Dr. Corrigan brought up with re-
spect to these three patients:
She says that for each of these patients, it was “medically impossible
to say that death was the guaranteed outcome.” Regarding Jane Doe
1, for example, she says that this patient “could have developed se-
vere sepsis potentially resulting in catastrophic injuries such as sep-
tic emboli necessitating limb amputations or uncontrollable uterine
hemorrhage ultimately requiring hysterectomy but [she] could still
be alive.” Jane Does 2 and 3 were in similar situations—they could
have survived, but each “potentially would have had to live the re-
mainder of their lives with significant disabilities and chronic medi-
cal conditions as a result of their pregnancy complication.”
Id. (citations omitted); see also Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Ctr., P.S.C.,
664 S.W.3d 633, 673–81 (Ky. 2023) (Keller, J., concurring in part and dissenting
in part) (detailing numerous health risks women experience during pregnancy
and how Kentucky’s medical exception to its abortion statute takes healthcare
decisions away from women and healthcare professionals).
Physicians in Iowa will now face the same sort of dilemmas at the expense
of their patients as they try to discern whether an abortion is necessary to “pre-
serve the life of the pregnant woman” as opposed to whether an abortion would
prevent the woman from experiencing life-altering health complications. Com-
pare Iowa Code § 146A.1(6)(a), with id. § 146E.1(4). That is if there are physi-
cians trained and willing to perform abortions at all in Iowa. As I have already
discussed above, data shows medical residents are starting to avoid even apply-
ing for positions in states with significant abortion bans.21 And obstetricians who
21See Medical Residents are Starting to Avoid States with Abortion Bans.
45
already live in those states with strict abortion laws are discontinuing their prac-
tice, no longer providing abortions, or leaving the state.
In Idaho, for instance, more than fifty obstetricians stopped practicing in
the state since its strict abortion ban took effect in August 2022, and only two
obstetricians moved to the state to practice in a fifteen-month span.22 Two hos-
pitals closed their obstetric programs, and a third program was in “serious jeop-
ardy” of closing.23 Additionally, around 85% of obstetricians and gynecologists
in the state practiced in its seven most populous counties, while only twenty-two
of forty-four counties had access to any practicing obstetricians.24
This should be cause for concern in Iowa, where we already rank dead last
with the fewest ob-gyns per capita of any state, and many pregnant women face
long drives to receive the medical care they need.25 “Since 2000, 31 Iowa coun-
ties—most of them rural—have closed their obstetric services. By 2020, just 46
of the state’s 99 counties had at least one hospital that provided obstetric ser-
vices, down from 77 counties in years prior.”26
To be clear, this trend will affect all pregnant women in Iowa—not just
those seeking an abortion. While Iowa continues to see a decline in obstetric
facilities and providers, “the rate of obstetric complexities has risen, including a
greater average maternal age; increased risks for obesity, diabetes, and high
22The Associated Press, Dozens of Idaho Obstetricians Have Stopped Practicing There Since
Abortions Were Banned, Study Says, AP News (Feb. 21, 2024, 8:45 PM) [hereinafter Dozens of
Idaho Obstetricians Have Stopped Practicing], https://apnews.com/article/idaho-abortion-ban-
doctors-leaving-f34e901599f5eabed56ae96599c0e5c2 [https://perma.cc/7X58-ZXMV].
23Dozens of Idaho Obstetricians Have Stopped Practicing.
24Dozens of Idaho Obstetricians Have Stopped Practicing.
25See Novid Parsi, Delivering Help to Address Iowa’s Obstetric Care Needs, Medicine Iowa
(Spring 2024) [hereinafter Delivering Help to Address Iowa’s Obstetric Care Needs], https://med-
icineiowa.org/spring-2024/delivering-help-address-iowas-obstetric-care-needs
[https://perma.cc/3KH2-SJRH].
26Delivering Help to Address Iowa’s Obstetric Care Needs.
46
blood pressure among mothers; increased pre-delivery hospital stays; more
premature births; and more babies requiring neonatal intensive care units.”27
Plus, “[t]he farther that pregnant women must travel for care, the greater the
risks of morbidity for the mother or the infant.”28
“Preserving the life or health of the woman necessarily includes providing
an abortion when necessary to prevent severe, life altering damage.” Wrigley v.
Romanick, 988 N.W.2d 231, 242–43 (N.D. 2023). Iowa’s medical emergency ex-
ception fails on this front because its definition of “[m]edical emergency” explic-
itly states that it does not include situations “when continuation of the preg-
nancy will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a
major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” Iowa Code § 146A.1(6)(a). Does
that mean there is no exception even in cases where a woman will be forced to
endure a hysterectomy because she could not obtain a timely abortion under
this law? See Idaho, 623 F. Supp. 3d at 1105 (discussing medical complications
during pregnancy that could result in a hysterectomy if not treated swiftly
through abortion).
It also specifically excludes “psychological conditions [or] emotional condi-
tions.” Iowa Code § 146A.1(6)(a). Accordingly, “[i]f the pregnant woman has a
serious mental health condition, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, and
takes medications which are contraindicated for pregnancy,” she must “either
take those medications and deal with the impacts the medication will have on
the unborn or stop taking potentially life-saving medications and hope for the
best.” Planned Parenthood Great Nw., 522 P.3d at 1225. This example is part of
a bigger picture in which nearly 23% of pregnancy-related deaths are attributed
27Delivering Help to Address Iowa’s Obstetric Care Needs.
28Delivering Help to Address Iowa’s Obstetric Care Needs.
47
to mental health conditions that include suicide and overdose or poisoning re-
lated to substance use disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.29
Other life-altering consequences that may not qualify under the “medical
emergency” definition because they are not life-endangering include “severe sep-
sis requiring limb amputation, uncontrollable uterine hemorrhage requiring hys-
terectomy, kidney failure requiring lifelong dialysis, [and] hypoxic brain injury,”
potentially requiring these women to live the rest of their lives “with significant
disabilities and chronic medical conditions as a result of [their] pregnancy com-
plication[s].” Wrigley, 988 N.W.2d at 243 (quoting Idaho, 623 F. Supp. 3d at
1101); see also Allegheny Reprod. Health Ctr., 309 A.3d at 823 (acknowledging
information from providers that “continuing a pregnancy can exacerbate [pre-
existing] conditions and pose serious threats to a woman’s long-term health” and
that “[t]he ‘health damage, though serious and potentially life-threatening, is
usually not imminent enough to qualify the patient for abortion coverage under
the statutory exception to the [Medicaid] coverage ban, which requires that the
abortion be necessary to “avert the death” of the woman, rather than to avoid
serious long-term health consequences’ ”).
And though it should be obvious, the construction of this exception con-
tradicts the State’s claim that one of its interests in protecting life—both born
and unborn—is the “protection of maternal health and safety.” “A state interest
that truly was concerned with protecting women’s health would contain an ex-
ception . . . for the health of the woman even when she does not face death . . . .”
Allegheny Reprod. Health Ctr., 309 A.3d at 957 (Wecht, J., concurring). Sadly,
29Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention, Four in 5 Pregnancy-Related Deaths in the U.S.
are Preventable, CDC Newsroom (Sept. 19, 2022), https://www.cdc.gov/media/re-
leases/2022/p0919-pregnancy-related-deaths.html [https://perma.cc/JL2P-27EX].
48
that is not the case here, and this lack of regard for the lives of pregnant women
overlooks the impact that pregnancy complications can have on the family unit.
See Planned Parenthood Great Nw., 522 P.3d at 1220.
In particular, “[t]he health risks and complications a woman faces during
pregnancy can leave her unable to care for her existing children throughout the
pregnancy.” Id. “Even after childbirth, it can take months or years for a woman
to fully recover—if she completely recovers.” Id. Worse, when pregnancy compli-
cations result in the mother’s death, the life of the fetus that the statute is aiming
to protect—if it survives birth—and any of the woman’s remaining children are
left without a mother. Id. “A mother cannot care for, teach, and otherwise rear
her children if pregnancy complications claim her life or lead to serious health
consequences . . . [,] creating a domino effect where she can no longer provide
care to those who need her most.” Id. Nevertheless, this statute treats her life as
an afterthought.
In virtually any other medical setting, a competent nonpregnant person
experiencing medical complications may collaborate with their physician to make
an informed decision about their course of treatment. See Okla. Call for Reprod.
Just., 526 P.3d at 1131 (“We know of no other law that requires one to wait until
there is an actual medical emergency in order to receive treatment when the
harmful condition is known or probable to occur in the future.”). But when preg-
nant women experience life-threatening complications that could require an
abortion, the statute’s exception “put[s] all medical decisions and the power to
pursue the pregnant patient’s safety solely in the hands of the physician; the
patient will play no part” unless she has the ability to travel to a state that will
terminate the pregnancy. Cameron, 664 S.W.3d at 676 (Keller, J., concurring in
part and dissenting in part). It does so “not based upon science or viability but
49
upon a blanket assertion that [our State is] the protector[] of ‘life’ from the mo-
ment of conception.” Individual Members of Med. Licensing Bd. of Ind.,
233 N.E.3d at 461 (Bailey, J., concurring).30
3. Fetal abnormalities incompatible with life. Like the statute’s medical
emergency exception, the exception authorizing abortions when the fetus has a
fetal abnormality incompatible with life is largely unusable because, as dis-
cussed below, parents will often learn this devastating news when the fetal ab-
normality exception is no longer an option for them. Greer Donley, Parental Au-
tonomy Over Prenatal End-of-Life Decisions, 105 Minn. L. Rev. 175, 218–19
(2020) [hereinafter Donley]. This exception authorizes an abortion if “[t]he at-
tending physician certifies that the fetus has a fetal abnormality that in the phy-
sician’s reasonable medical judgment is incompatible with life.” Iowa Code
§ 146E.1(3)(d). The Board’s rules require that certification contain the “diagnosis
of the abnormality”; “basis for the diagnosis, including the tests and procedures
performed, the results of those tests and procedures, and why those results sup-
port the diagnosis”; and “[a] description of why the abnormality is incompatible
with life.” Iowa Admin. Code r. 653–13.17(4)(b). “The diagnosis and the attending
physician’s conclusion must be reached in good faith following a bona fide effort,
consistent with standard medical practice and reasonable medical judgment, to
determine the health of the fetus.” Id. r. 653–13.17(4)(b) (flush language).
30It is concerning that our legislators are attempting to dictate how medical professionals
perform their job, such as requiring the use of an abdominal ultrasound in testing for a fetal
heartbeat when a transvaginal ultrasound is the preferred practice in the first trimester because
it can provide more detailed results. See Venkatesh A. Murugan et al., Role of Ultrasound in the
Evaluation of First-Trimester Pregnancies in the Acute Setting, Ultrasonography (Oct. 16, 2019)
https://www.e-ultrasonography.org/journal/view.php?doi=10.14366/usg.19043
[https://perma.cc/2DM2-Y5GC]; NHS Found. Tr., Cambridge Univ. Hosps., Transvaginal Ultra-
sound Scan (TVS) in Early Pregnancy, https://www.cuh.nhs.uk/patient-information/transvagi-
nal-ultrasound-scan-tvs-in-early-pregnancy/ [https://perma.cc/96MJ-2JW5].
50
This exception is not available once the fetus reaches twenty or more
weeks if there is a detectable fetal heartbeat unless the pregnant woman has a
medical emergency that threatens her life “or the abortion is necessary to pre-
serve the life of an unborn child.” Iowa Code § 146E.2(2)(b). Yet, “parents most
commonly receive a fetal diagnosis of an anatomical condition during the anat-
omy ultrasound, which occurs roughly halfway through the pregnancy (around
twenty weeks),” and “[m]ost anatomical conditions cannot be diagnosed sooner
than this mid-pregnancy ultrasound because the organs are not sufficiently de-
veloped before this point.” Donley, 105 Minn. L. Rev. at 218–19.
Even if a fetal abnormality is discovered before the twenty-week deadline
to the exception, it may take weeks for the pregnant woman to undergo addi-
tional tests or receive a second opinion to feel confident in the diagnosis and
understand the fetus’s prognosis. Id. at 219. While time is of the essence under
the fetal abnormality exception, it can also take a pregnant woman weeks to
obtain an appointment to terminate her doomed pregnancy, comply with the
state-mandated waiting period, and collect the funds necessary to pay for the
procedure. Id. at 219–20. Thus, the statute’s twenty-week ban will either prevent
pregnant women from ending their pregnancy that is incompatible with life,
“rush an incredibly fraught decision, or force them to travel out of state, adding
additional stress, cost, and trauma.” Id. at 220.
Finding out that a baby so desperately wanted will not survive birth is
certainly heartbreaking. The twenty-week limit on the fetal abnormality excep-
tion has the callous potential to make an incredibly difficult situation even worse
by forcing pregnant women to carry their doomed pregnancies to term with the
pain of knowing their fetus will not survive.
This is already happening in other states with comparable exceptions. In
South Carolina, a pregnant woman was forced to carry her nonviable fetus for
51
seven weeks after learning at the fetus’s eighteen-week scan that it had a rare
congenital heart defect with “a very grim outlook” in even the best-case sce-
nario.31 Because it was too late to end the pregnancy under South Carolina law,
she had to travel to another state to obtain the procedure.32
In Alabama, where the state’s strict abortion ban made exceptions for con-
ditions in which the fetus would be stillborn or die shortly after birth, doctors
denied a patient the option to terminate her pregnancy even though her fetus
had a severe genetic abnormality that doctors said would result in either a still-
birth or death immediately after birth.33 She had to seek financial help and then
make a daylong drive with her husband to Washington D.C. for the procedure.34
The woman opted for sterilization shortly thereafter, explaining, “The experience,
going through everything with finding out that your child is not going to live … it
inflicted so much trauma on me . . . . I don’t ever want to go through that again
and I wouldn’t wish this upon my worst enemy.”35
In Florida, it was too late to terminate a pregnancy under the state’s abor-
tion ban when doctors informed a pregnant woman at her fetus’s twenty-four-
week ultrasound that the fetus had no kidneys and was sure to die.36 Unable to
31Stephanie Emma Pfeffer, Former Ms. South Carolina Forced to Carry Unviable Fetus for
7 Weeks: It “Was Like a Dagger to the Heart,” People (Nov. 11, 2022, 1:04 PM) [hereinafter Former
Ms. South Carolina Forced to Carry Unviable Fetus for 7 Weeks: It “Was Like a Dagger to the Heart],
https://people.com/health/woman-forced-to-carry-unviable-fetus-for-7-weeks/
[https://perma.cc/B24S-QCX7].
32Former Ms. South Carolina Forced to Carry Unviable Fetus for 7 Weeks: It “Was Like a
Dagger to the Heart.
33Nadine El-Bawab, Tess Scott, Christina Ng, & Acacia Nunes, In Post-Roe America,
Women Detail Agony of Being Forced to Carry Nonviable Pregnancies to Term, ABC News (Dec. 14,
2023, 5:06 AM) [hereinafter In Post-Roe America], https://abcnews.go.com/US/post-roe-amer-
ica-women-detail-agony-forced-carry/story?id=105563349 [https://perma.cc/4QDE-FKBM].
34In Post-Roe America.
35In Post-Roe America.
36Elizabeth Cohen, Carma Hassan, & Amanda Musa, Because of Florida Abortion Laws,
She Carried Her Baby to Term Knowing He Would Die, CNN (May 3, 2023, 10:32 AM) [hereinafter
52
afford the costs of traveling out of state to terminate the pregnancy, the woman
carried to term a baby who had no kidneys and died in her arms shortly after
birth—just as her doctors had predicted would happen.37 These stories are not
unique.38
The agonizing experiences of these women not only highlight the lack of
humanity inherent in Iowa’s comparable statute but also demonstrate another
problem with the State’s claim that this statute relates to a “vital interest in
protecting unborn human life at all stages of development.” Namely, a statutory
exception authorizing the abortion of a fetus diagnosed with a fetal abnormality
that is incompatible with life before twenty weeks does nothing to protect unborn
life at all stages of development. And if the reason for prohibiting the abortion of
a fetus with a fetal abnormality incompatible with life after twenty weeks is that
the fetus could survive by some miracle, then the exception authorizing abor-
tions for these cases before the fetus reaches twenty weeks makes even less
sense in the context of protecting unborn life.
Both situations involve fetuses with abnormalities incompatible with life,
and nothing in the record demonstrates why a pregnant woman is only allowed
to end this doomed pregnancy before twenty weeks. In any event, there is no
unborn life to protect when a fetus has an abnormality incompatible with life.
Because of Florida Abortion Laws, She Carried Her Baby to Term Knowing He Would Die],
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/health/florida-abortion-term-pregnancy/index.html
[https://perma.cc/L4MM-GUHN].
37Because of Florida Abortion Laws, She Carried Her Baby to Term Knowing He Would Die.
38See, e.g., Nadine El-Bawab, Tess Scott, Christina Ng, & Acacia Nunes, Delayed and
Denied: Women Pushed to Death’s Door for Abortion Care in Post-Roe America, ABC News (Dec. 14,
2023, 5:09 AM), https://abcnews.go.com/US/delayed-denied-women-pushed-deaths-door-
abortion-care/story?id=105563255 [https://perma.cc/2ZXP-VLJ8]; Cameron, 664 S.W.3d at
665 (Bisig, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (describing the stories of two Kentucky
women whose healthcare providers informed them that they could not help the women terminate
their nonviable pregnancies).
53
Instead of promoting life, the statute is promoting birth—even when that birth
results in an already deceased baby.
4. In vitro fertilization. It would be cruelly ironic for a law purportedly en-
acted to save babies to actually result in fewer babies being born to families
through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Yet, the statute’s poorly crafted “twin excep-
tion” that ostensibly exists with IVF in mind raises serious questions about the
operation of IVF programs at the University of Iowa and elsewhere that give hope
to families desperately trying to have babies. Under that exception, a woman may
obtain an abortion even when she is twenty or more weeks pregnant and the
unborn child has a detectible fetal heartbeat if “the abortion is necessary to pre-
serve the life of an unborn child.” Iowa Code § 146E.2(b). An “unborn child” un-
der the statute is “an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fer-
tilization to live birth.” Id. § 146A.1(6)(b); see also id. § 146E.1(7). Can it be that
the legislature is attempting to carve out an exception for voluntary abortions
after twenty weeks for women who choose to become pregnant through IVF yet
deny that same opportunity for women who have become pregnant through rape
or incest?
This exception raises a host of potential issues for women in Iowa who
resort to IVF to help them get pregnant. One issue is that the definition of “un-
born child” is essentially the same as the definition that caught national atten-
tion in Alabama, where the Alabama Supreme Court held that the state’s Wrong-
ful Death of a Minor Act applied to all “unborn children,” including embryos kept
in a cryogenic nursery located outside of a biological uterus at the time of their
destruction. See LePage v. Ctr. for Reprod. Med., P.C., ___ So. 3d ___, ___,
2024 WL 656591, at *2, *6 (Ala. Feb. 16, 2024) (en banc) (“The upshot here is
that the phrase ‘minor child’ means the same thing in the Wrongful Death of a
Minor Act as it does in everyday parlance: ‘an unborn or recently born’ individual
54
member of the human species, from fertilization until the age of majority.”). That
definition, and the court’s interpretation of it, raised questions for providers and
patients alike, including whether patients had the autonomy to donate or destroy
unused embryos and whether they could freeze future embryos that are created
during fertility treatment.39
Iowa was not immune from this fallout, as Iowa’s Senate Judiciary Com-
mittee declined to bring up a bill shortly thereafter that would increase the pen-
alties for terminating a person’s pregnancy without their consent, which also
changed the phrase “terminates a human pregnancy” in the current law to
“causes the death of an unborn person.”40 The committee chair stated that he
pulled the bill over “definite concerns about in vitro fertilization and the negative
effects and unintended consequences with that.”41 Similarly, the house judiciary
committee chair indicated his belief that Iowa presented a different situation
from Alabama but that “we have to come to terms with how we’re going to deal
with the IVF issue.”42 Opponents of the bill in the legislature also warned that it
could jeopardize IVF treatment in Iowa.43 However, laws that treat IVF clinics or
39See, e.g., Kim Chandler, Warnings of the Impact of Fertility Treatments in Alabama Rush
in After Frozen Embryo Ruling, AP News (Feb. 21, 2024), https://apnews.com/article/alabama-
supreme-court-from-embryos-161390f0758b04a7638e2ddea20df7ca [https://perma.cc/XC4K-
TCQS].
40Stephen Gruber-Miller, IVF Fears Scuttle Iowa Bill Raising Penalty for Ending Pregnancy
Without Consent, Des Moines Reg. (Mar. 14, 2024) [hereinafter IVF Fears Scuttle Iowa Bill Raising
Penalty for Ending Pregnancy Without Consent], https://www.desmoinesregis-
ter.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/14/key-lawmaker-brad-zaun-wont-advance-bill-with-
penalties-for-killing-an-unborn-person-ivf-concerns/72961183007/ [https://perma.cc/9HJ9-
XUK9].
41IVF Fears Scuttle Iowa Bill Raising Penalty for Ending Pregnancy Without Consent.
42IVF Fears Scuttle Iowa Bill Raising Penalty for Ending Pregnancy Without Consent.
43IVF Fears Scuttle Iowa Bill Raising Penalty for Ending Pregnancy Without Consent.
55
embryos created through IVF differently from other physicians or embryos cre-
ated through natural reproduction—including rape or incest—raise other con-
cerns, such as the denial of equal protection.
Another issue stems from the fertilization process itself. With IVF, eggs
and sperm are removed from the female and male, and “fertilization happens
outside the body,” with the embryo “grown outside the body for a minimum of
three to five days before being placed back into the body.” Rebecca Feinberg,
Transcript: The Future of IVF Post Dobbs, 37 J.L. & Health 35, 42 (2023) [herein-
after Feinberg]. And during this fertilization process, there is an increased num-
ber of embryos to increase the chance of achieving a live pregnancy. Id. at 46.
Because multiple embryos are often transferred into a woman’s uterus to achieve
pregnancy, multiple pregnancies—i.e., twins or triplets—occur more often com-
pared to natural reproduction. Judith Daar, Where Does Life Begin? Discerning
the Impact of Dobbs on Assisted Reproductive Technologies, 51 J.L. Med. & Ethics
518, 521 (2023) (“In 2019, nearly 17% of all [assisted reproductive technology]
births were multiples compared to just over 3% of all U.S. births.”).
With more fetuses comes more risks for both the mother and the fetuses.
Id. “When a pregnancy results in high order multiples, high-risk obstetricians
typically recommend selective reduction” or abortion to terminate one or more of
the fetuses and allow the pregnancy to progress more safely for both the remain-
ing fetus or fetuses and the mother. Feinberg, 37 J.L. & Health at 50. Neither
the statute nor the Board’s rules provide guidance on how a physician is to make
this determination that an “abortion is necessary to preserve the life of an un-
born child.” Iowa Code § 146E.2(b). Like the medical emergency exception, it is
unclear how this exception applies in practice. And like the medical emergency
exception, physicians will be left guessing and turning to lawyers for help making
their medical decisions in addressing how to treat these high-risk pregnancies.
56
Finally, this exception allowing the termination of one unborn child to pre-
serve the life of another when both unborn children have detectable fetal heart-
beats calls into question the State’s professed vital interest in protecting unborn
life at all stages of development. Consider a mother in a fertility program trying
for one baby who gets pregnant with quadruplets, all with detectable fetal heart-
beats. According to her physicians, there is a nearly fifty percent chance that
some or all of the babies will die or suffer catastrophic permanent disabilities if
she tries to carry all four to birth. But if she aborts one of them, the odds of the
other three being born healthy increases to eighty-five percent. Under the stat-
ute’s vague exception allowing for an abortion to preserve the life of an unborn
child, it is unclear—at best—how a physician should proceed. At worst, it means
the mother could lose all four babies because the physician determines she does
not meet the exception.
II. Conclusion.
In my opinion, the only female lives that this statute treats with any mean-
ingful regard and dignity are the unborn lives of female fetuses. After that, this
statute forces pregnant women (and young girls) to endure and suffer through
life-altering health complications that range from severe sepsis requiring limb
amputation to a hysterectomy so long as those women are not at death’s door.
All in the name of promoting unborn life—or, more accurately, birth. Nothing
promotes life like a forced hysterectomy preventing a woman from ever becoming
pregnant again because she could not terminate a doomed pregnancy under the
medical emergency exception.
57
Those Iowans opposed to abortion with extremely limited exceptions may
applaud today’s decision because their interests align with the State’s, and this
ruling is a pivotal step in restricting the procedure in our state. Make no mistake:
“[T]his discrete and momentary alignment is no protection against the state shift-
ing its target. Empowering the state to direct and occupy the lives of individuals
in ways that serve our personal interests also empowers the state to direct and
occupy our lives in ways that do not.” Allegheny Reprod. Health Ctr., 309 A.3d at
970 (Wecht, J., concurring). Today’s winners could very well be on the other side
of the fence tomorrow. Although this fetal-heartbeat law most directly affects
women, the ominous consequences of affirming this level of government intru-
sion will negatively impact all current and future Iowans in one way or another.
Waterman and Mansfield, JJ., join this dissent.
58
#23–1145, Planned Parenthood v. Reynolds
MANSFIELD, Justice (dissenting).
Six years ago, I dissented from a decision that subjected all abortion
regulation in Iowa to strict scrutiny. See Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v.
Reynolds ex rel. State (PPH 2018), 915 N.W.2d 206, 246–59 (Iowa 2018)
(Mansfield, J., dissenting). I wrote, “The fact that there are two profound
concerns—a woman’s autonomy over her body and human life—has to drive any
fair-minded constitutional analysis of the problem.” Id. at 249. I remain of that
view. But the court around me has shifted. So, instead of a constitutional rule
that gives no weight to the State’s interest in human life, we now have in Iowa a
constitutional rule that gives no weight to a woman’s autonomy over her body.
PPH 2018 “lack[ed a] sense of balance and perspective.” Id. at 246. So,
regrettably, does today’s decision.
I believe that subjecting a near-total ban on abortion to a rational basis
test—the same test we apply to traffic cameras, and a more forgiving test than
the one we apply to a law not allowing county auditors to correct defective
absentee ballot applications—disserves the people of Iowa and their
constitution.44 The liberty protected by article I, section 9 of the Iowa
Constitution includes a woman’s ability to make decisions regarding her own
body, just as it includes rights of procreation, parenting, and to use
contraception. Because Iowa Code section 146E.2 (2023) largely eliminates a
woman’s ability to end a pregnancy in our state, I would hold that it is
unconstitutional and affirm the temporary injunction.
44See Behm v. City of Cedar Rapids, 922 N.W.2d 524, 552–55 (Iowa 2019) (applying
rational basis test to use of traffic cameras); League of United Latin Am. Citizens of Iowa v. Pate,
950 N.W.2d 204, 209–10 (Iowa 2020) (per curiam) (applying intermediate scrutiny to election law
change).
59
I am convinced that the legislature and the Governor adopted chapter
146E out of the highest and best motives. They believe in the total sanctity of
human life, including unborn life. But I fear that this is going to turn out badly.
Chapter 146E will not end abortions for Iowans; it will only end most abortions
in Iowa. When country after country around the world is legalizing abortion, it is
incongruous for one of the freest states, in the freest country in the world, to be
effectively outlawing it.45
Iowa recognizes a host of freedoms: the freedom to bring a loaded firearm
into a government building, the freedom to ride a motorcycle without a helmet,
the freedom to use cannabidiol for untested and unproven medical purposes,
and the freedom to throw evidence of a crime into a trash can and not worry
about the police retrieving it.46 Everyone is free, except for the 600,000 Iowa
women of childbearing age who will have no legal option in our state but to carry
a pregnancy to term in most circumstances.
In part I of this dissent, I will discuss the practical consequences of lifting
the injunction. In part II, I will respond to the majority’s contention that in 2022,
we held that abortion wasn’t a fundamental right. In part III, I will explain why
a woman’s autonomy over her body is entitled to greater protection under our
precedents than the rational basis test. In part IV, I will set forth the
45See Abortion Law: Global Comparisons, Council on Foreign Rels. (Mar. 7, 2024,
2:30 P.M.), https://www.cfr.org/article/abortion-law-global-comparisons [https://perma.cc/
2QVX-7Q99] (noting that from 1994 to 2023 sixty countries increased access to abortion and
four countries, including the United States, decreased access). With few exceptions, countries
with democratically elected governments that respect the rule of law allow abortion to some
extent. See id. (presenting a country-by-country map). In 2021, “[s]ixty-seven countries’ laws
permit[ted] abortion upon request with varied gestational limits, whereas 26 countries
prohibit[ed] abortion altogether.” Madison Glennie et al., The World’s Abortion Laws, in Whose
Choice is It?: Abortion, Medicine, and the Law 1, 1 (David F. Walbert & J. Douglas Butler eds.,
7th ed. 2021) (footnote omitted).
46See Iowa Code § 724.28(3); id. § 124E.12(4)(a); State v. Wright, 961 N.W.2d 396, 420
(Iowa 2021).
60
constitutional standard that I believe applies to abortion regulation in Iowa. And
in part V, I will explain why chapter 146E is unconstitutional under that
standard.
I. The Practical Consequences of Lifting the Injunction.
Reasonable people can—and do—disagree strongly about abortion. It
poses many difficult, wrenching questions. For an abortion opponent: Should a
woman carrying twins be allowed to abort one fetus if the two are not doing well
together, and this is the best chance of avoiding a bad outcome for both? For an
abortion-rights advocate: Does a woman’s autonomy over her body include the
right to have an abortion for sex-selection purposes?
Regardless, Iowa Code chapter 146E clearly plants a flag at one end of this
debate. By dissolving the temporary injunction and authorizing Iowa Code
section 146E.2 to take effect, today’s majority has eliminated a woman’s ability
to have an abortion as it has existed in Iowa since 1973.
It should be noted that the evidence in these proceedings has come from
the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs filed affidavits; the State elected not to make any
factual record.
The record shows that the statute essentially bans abortions six weeks
after the last menstrual period or about two weeks after a woman with a regular
menstrual cycle would have missed a period. But many women do not have
regular menstrual cycles and would not realize they are pregnant at this time.
Many ob-gyns will not schedule an initial appointment until well after the sixth
week. If there is a serious but nonfatal fetal abnormality, there is no way to know
this by the sixth week. In Iowa, over 90% of existing abortions occur after the
sixth week.
Other issues exist. Asking for a medical appointment and obtaining one
are two different things. Even men like me can attest to the delays one inevitably
61
experiences in trying to see a doctor or their assistant. Another complicating
factor is that the clinics providing abortions in Iowa have the capacity to perform
abortions, at most, three days a week.
Also, Iowa Code section 146A.1, not at issue here, requires at least a
twenty-four-hour waiting period between the woman’s first visit to the abortion
provider and the actual abortion itself. Moreover, minors under the age of
eighteen must go through a parental notification or a judicial bypass before
undergoing an abortion, which takes additional time. See Iowa Code § 135L.3.
In whole, this means that a woman in Iowa has at most two weeks to
determine she is pregnant, decide she does not want to carry the pregnancy to
term, schedule and attend her initial visit with the medical provider that would
perform the abortion, and schedule and attend the follow-up visit for the abortion
itself at least twenty-four hours later. In short, Iowa Code chapter 146E
preserves the theoretical, but not the practical, ability for a woman to have an
abortion in Iowa.
II. Our 2022 Decision Rejected Strict Scrutiny of Abortion
Regulations; It Did Not Hold That There Was No Fundamental Right.
My colleagues spend much of their majority opinion missing a point that
was obvious to the district court in this case. That is, my colleagues contend that
we previously held in 2022 that abortion is not a fundamental right under the
Iowa Constitution. That’s simply wrong, and repeating that assertion five times,
as the majority does in the course of its opinion, doesn’t make it any more true.
Our 2022 decision overruled our 2018 decision where we had gone beyond
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern
Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), to hold that abortion was a
fundamental right requiring strict scrutiny of all abortion restrictions. Planned
Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Reynolds ex rel. State (PPH 2022), 975 N.W.2d
62710, 715 (Iowa 2022). The scope of our 2022 decision was clear: “[A]ll we hold
today is that the Iowa Constitution is not the source of a fundamental right to
an abortion necessitating a strict scrutiny standard of review for regulations
affecting that right.” Id. at 716 (emphasis added). As the district court put it in
this case,
The controlling opinion in PPH 2022, however, did not find that there
was no fundamental right to an abortion protected under Iowa’s
Constitution. Rather, the Court only held that “the Iowa
Constitution is not the source of a fundamental right to an abortion
necessitating a strict scrutiny standard of review for regulations
affecting that right.” PPH 2022, 975 N.W.2d at 716 (emphasis added).
That a distinction was intended is apparent from the Respondents’
reasoning itself. If the court simply found that there was no
fundamental right to an abortion, there would have been no reason
to direct that undue burden remained the governing standard; the
standard would have defaulted to the rational basis test under the
same rationale as Middlekauff and Horsfield. That did not happen,
prompting Justice McDermott’s dissent . . . .
In 2022, we emphasized that a proper legal standard—unlike 2018’s strict
scrutiny—needed to account for the weighty considerations on both sides:
We agree with the PPH [2018] majority that “[a]utonomy and
dominion over one’s body go to the very heart of what it means to be
free.” We also agree that “being a parent is a life-altering obligation
that falls unevenly on women in our society.” Yet, we must
disapprove of PPH [2018]’s legal formulation that insufficiently
recognizes that future human lives are at stake—and we must
disagree with the views of today’s dissent that the state has no
legitimate interest in this area.
Id. at 746 (second alteration in original) (first quoting PPH 2018, 915 N.W.2d at
237; then quoting id. at 249 (Mansfield, J., dissenting)). Thus, PPH 2022
overturned strict scrutiny but did not go further to hold that a woman lacked
any kind of fundamental right.
There are fundamental rights that the state can regulate without triggering
strict scrutiny. One example is voting. Voting is unquestionably a fundamental
63
right, but the state has a very significant interest in regulating voting, so we
subject voting regulations to an intermediate standard of review. See League of
United Latin Am. Citizens of Iowa v. Pate (LULAC), 950 N.W.2d 204, 209 (Iowa
2020) (per curiam) (applying the same “balancing approach” in another voting
case); id. at 222–23 (Oxley, J., dissenting) (noting that voting is a fundamental
right but also that voting regulations are subjected to a balancing approach);
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Comm. v. Pate, 950 N.W.2d 1, 6–7 (Iowa 2020)
(per curiam) (applying the Anderson-Burdick “balancing approach” to a state
constitutional challenge to voting regulations).”
The majority makes an unsuccessful attempt to rebut the analogy. It
contends that with voting, there are constitutional requirements on both sides
and, with abortion, there are no constitutional requirements on either side. I
disagree that there is no constitutional right of autonomy over one’s own body.
For example, we have noted that there is a widely recognized constitutional right
to refuse medical treatment. See Polk Cnty. Sheriff v. Iowa Dist. Ct., 594 N.W.2d
421, 426 (Iowa 1999) (en banc). In a particular case, this right is subject to a
balancing test based on the state interests involved. Id. at 426–31.
III. Iowa Recognizes a Constitutional Right for People to Make
Personal Decisions Concerning Their Own Bodies, Procreation, and
Parenting.
Whatever may have been the scope of article I, section 9 in 1857, today it
protects an individual’s right to make personal decisions regarding procreation
and parenting. This is not because any particular set of supreme court justices
have imposed their policy preferences on Iowans but for many other logical
reasons. Just as property law has not remained static since 1857, so too notions
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of liberty have also evolved.47 Today we value personal autonomy; some critics
would argue that this has come at the expense of personal responsibility.
Additionally, the 1857 Iowa constitutional framework that gave full protections
only to white males has been supplanted by one that protects all citizens equally.
A. Regardless of Original Intent, There Is Today a Substantive Due
Process Right to Make Decisions Concerning Procreation, Parenting, and
One’s Own Body. Our constitution proclaims that “no person shall be deprived
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Iowa Const. art. I, § 9.
Originally “due process of law” may have meant simply “ordinary judicial
proceedings in court,” Stewart v. Bd. of Supervisors, 30 Iowa 9, 28 (1870), but it
did not take long for the due process clause to assume substantive importance.
For example, in Wragg v. Griffin, we held that it violated due process of law to
force someone suspected of venereal disease to provide a blood sample for
testing. 170 N.W. 400, 403 (Iowa 1919).
More recently, in Santi v. Santi, we struck down a statute authorizing our
courts to order grandparent visitation over the objection of parents as violating
substantive due process under article I, section 9. 633 N.W.2d 312, 321 (Iowa
2001). We concluded that the statute “exalts the socially desirable goal of
grandparent-grandchild bonding over the constitutionally recognized right of
parents to decide with whom their children will associate.” Id. at 320. We said
that since the statute permits “state intrusion on fit parents’ fundamental liberty
interest in childrearing, we find it facially unconstitutional under article I,
sections 8 and 9 of the Iowa Constitution.” Id. at 321.
In In re Marriage of Witten, a divorce case, we held that one party could not
use the parties’ previously frozen human embryos without the other’s
47For example, at the time of the adoption of our constitution in 1857, it was illegal to
hunt or fish on Sundays. See 1854 Iowa Acts ch. 33, § 1 (codified at Iowa Code § 4392 (1860)).
65
consent—even in the face of a prior agreement to the contrary. 672 N.W.2d 768,
782–83 (Iowa 2003). We stated, “We think judicial decisions and statutes in Iowa
reflect respect for the right of individuals to make family and reproductive
decisions based on their current views and values.” Id. at 782. We added,
[C]ourts that have considered one party’s desire to use frozen
embryos over the objection of the other progenitor have held that the
objecting party’s fundamental right not to procreate outweighs the
other party’s procreative rights, even in the face of a prior agreement
allowing one party to use the embryos upon the parties’ divorce.
Id. at 780.
In Hensler v. City of Davenport, we addressed a municipal ordinance that
imposed fines and other sanctions on parents whose children repeatedly engaged
in illegal activity and who failed to rebut a presumption of inadequate
supervision. 790 N.W.2d 569, 575–76 (Iowa 2010). We recognized that a parent
has a “fundamental parental right to exercise care, custody, and control over
children” that warrants substantive due process protection. Id. at 581–82.
In In re Guardianship of Kennedy, we held that sterilization of an individual
with intellectual disabilities without court approval would raise “serious due
process concerns.” 845 N.W.2d 707, 714–15 (Iowa 2014); see also Varnum v.
Brien, 763 N.W.2d 862, 901 n.27 (Iowa 2009) (“The County does not specifically
contend the goal of Iowa’s marriage statute is to deter gay and lesbian couples
from having children. Such a claim would raise serious due process concerns.”);
State ex rel. Iowa Dep’t of Health v. Van Wyk, 320 N.W.2d 599, 606 (Iowa 1982)
(en banc) (“As a matter of privacy persons enjoy a fundamental right to seek or
reject medical treatment generally.”).
In McQuistion v. City of Clinton, where a pregnant woman challenged a
municipality’s refusal to accommodate her pregnancy with a light-duty work
assignment, we stated that the right to procreate qualifies as a fundamental right
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for substantive due process purposes. 872 N.W.2d 817, 820–21, 833 (Iowa
2015).
In State v. Fatland, our court of appeals held that a condition prohibiting
the defendant from becoming pregnant while on probation should be eliminated
from the sentencing order because it “impinge[d] upon her fundamental right to
procreation.” 882 N.W.2d 123, 126 (Iowa Ct. App. 2016). The panel deciding this
case included one of the members of today’s majority. Id. at 124.
In light of the foregoing, I fail to see how a woman’s right not to procreate
can have no constitutional protection under the due process clause of article I,
section 9. The decision not to have children is as fundamental as the decision to
have children.48
The majority treats Iowa Code chapter 146E as a form of economic and
social legislation. That is, it applies rational basis review because there are
merely “interests” on both sides that can be balanced by the legislature so long
as the legislature advances a reasonably conceivable interest. Yet if rational basis
is the correct standard to apply to a law that requires a woman to carry a
pregnancy to term, despite all the effects it has on her body and her future life,
rational basis would also be the correct standard to apply to a law that does not
allow her to do so. I reject both propositions.
This does not mean that any governmental interference is subject to strict
scrutiny. Previously, we have considered the degree of intrusion. In Hensler, we
applied only rational basis because “the ordinance does not intrude directly and
substantially into a parent’s parental decision-making authority, but instead
only minimally impinges on a parent’s fundamental right to direct the upbringing
48Could the Iowa Legislature limit family size, an issue that The Des Moines Register
polled on in 1971? See James C. Mohr, Iowa’s Abortion Battles of the Late 1960s and Early
1970s: Long-term Perspectives and Short-term Analyses, 50 Annals Iowa 63, 73 (1989). Today
we would say clearly no.
67
of his or her child.” 790 N.W.2d at 583. Likewise, in McQuistion, we rejected the
constitutional challenge on the ground that “[r]easonable regulations that do not
directly and substantially interfere with the right may be imposed.” 872 N.W.2d
at 833.
The majority analogizes a constitutional right of personal autonomy over
one’s body to a hypothetical right to possess and use illegal drugs. Not so. There
is a world of difference between telling a woman she has to carry a pregnancy to
term and telling someone they can’t use meth. In the latter case, the state isn’t
interfering with decisions about procreation, sex, or parenting. It isn’t forcing
someone to donate their body to the burdens of pregnancy. It’s simply putting a
harmful outside agent off-limits because it leads to antisocial behavior. See, e.g.,
State v. Hartog, 440 N.W.2d 852, 855 (Iowa 1989) (drawing a distinction for
constitutional purposes between “intimate decisions relating to
marriage, procreation, child rearing, education or family that have heretofore
been recognized as deserving of heightened constitutional protection” and the
decision not to wear a seat belt (quoting People v. Kohrig, 498 N.E.2d 1158, 1161
(Ill. 1986) (per curiam))).
The better analogy, which the majority is surely aware of but doesn’t
address, is between laws restricting abortion and laws relating to contraception,
sodomy, and same-sex marriage. If the rational basis test applies to the former,
why not the latter? We held otherwise in Varnum v. Brien, 763 N.W.2d at 896–97.
Should we have applied the rational basis test in Varnum?
B. Constitutional Liberty, Especially for Women, Has Changed Since
1857. Our state has changed dramatically since 1857 but particularly as to the
status and rights of women. In 1998, the people of Iowa constitutionalized those
changes to some extent by adopting the Iowa Equal Rights Amendment. See
1997 Iowa Acts ch. 216, § 1 (constitutionalized at Iowa Const. art. I, § 1) (“All
68
men and women are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable
rights . . . .” (emphasis added)).
I begin by trying to paint a picture of 1857. That’s difficult to do. But we
can at least look at what was forbidden in the Iowa Code.
Although abortion wasn’t illegal when our 1857 constitution took effect,
six months later the general assembly adopted a law making the performance of
an abortion a misdemeanor, “unless the same shall be necessary to preserve the
life of such woman.” 1858 Iowa Acts ch. 58, § 1 (codified at Iowa Code § 4221(1860)). This is often cited as proving that article I, section 9—as originally
understood—could not have prohibited laws against abortion.
The law applied to “every person who shall wilfully administer to any
pregnant woman, any medicine, drug, substance or thing whatever, or shall use
or employ any instrument or other means whatever, with the intent thereby to
procure the miscarriage of any such woman.” Id. A historian has explained that
“the word ‘pregnant’ meant quickened,” which occurred upon the “first
perception of fetal movement by the mother herself.” James C. Mohr, Iowa’s
Abortion Battles of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s: Long-term Perspectives and
Short-term Analyses, 50 Annals Iowa at 63, 65 (1989). We might say today that
this understanding avoids the word “pregnant” being superfluous to the word
“miscarriage.” See Iowa Individual Health Benefit Reins. Ass’n v. State Univ. of
Iowa, 999 N.W.2d 656, 663 (Iowa 2023) (“We presume statutes or rules do not
contain superfluous words.” (quoting State v. Boone, 989 N.W.2d 645, 650 (Iowa
2023))).
Regardless, and perhaps more importantly, Iowa Code section 4221 was
part of a larger legal fabric, a fabric that treated women in a protective yet
patronizing way. When our constitution was adopted, a father could sue a man
for seducing his daughter. Zerfing v. Mourer, 2 Greene 520, 520–21 (Iowa 1850).
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An unmarried woman could sue a man for seducing her. Gover v. Dill, 3 Iowa
(Clarke) 337, 339 (1856).49
Seducing “any unmarried woman of previously chaste character” was a
felony that could be punished by up to five years in prison. Iowa Code § 2586(1851); Iowa Code § 4209 (1860). Adultery was a felony that could be punished
by up to three years in prison; if only one of the parties was married, they were
still both guilty of adultery. Iowa Code § 2705 (1851); Iowa Code § 4347 (1860).
Cohabitation was also a crime, although a misdemeanor. Iowa Code § 2709(1851); Iowa Code § 4351 (1860).
49The Iowa Code of 1851 provided causes of action for seduction to an unmarried female
and to the parent or guardian of a minor daughter. Iowa Code §§ 1696–1697 (1851). The Iowa Code of
1860 provided the same causes of action. Iowa Code §§ 2790–2791 (1860).
Defamation law also offers a window into 1850s Iowa. Consider Dailey v. Reynolds,
4 Greene 354 (Iowa 1854). There, we held that allegations that a woman “was guilty of
fornication” were slanderous per se. Id. at 354, 356. In reaching this conclusion, we stated:
A female against whom the want of chastity is established is at once driven beyond
the reach of every courtesy and charity of life, and almost beyond the portals of
humanity. By common consent, such an imputation is everywhere treated as the
deepest insult and vilest charge that could be given or inflicted upon the victim or
her friends . . . .
Id. at 355. We added that “society, as now constituted, shrinks from” the idea that such claims
would not be slanderous per se “with a repugnance bordering upon horror” and that “[o]ur whole
natures rise up in rebellion against such a revolting proposition.” Id.
Significantly, only two years later we held that allegations that a woman had obtained an
abortion were not slanderous per se. Abrams v. Foshee, 3 Iowa (Clarke) 274, 278–80 (1856). Our
holding relied on the rule that to maintain a slander claim, the words must cause “some injury
or loss to the plaintiff, either in law or fact,” and under the 1851 Iowa Code, abortion was not
illegal. Id. at 277–78.
We acknowledged Dailey was a “departure from the general rule” described above. Id. at
280. But, we reiterated that the words spoken there “would tend necessarily to exclude [the
woman] from society, and render her infamous in the common sense of that term” and “would
immediately and necessarily tend to hinder her advancement in life.” Id. In our view, Dailey “ha[d]
its origin, and receive[d] its sanction, in that just jealousy and care with which the reputation of
the female for chastity, is guarded in every civilized community.” Id.
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So while a doctor could have gone to jail for performing an abortion, unless
the man who impregnated the woman was her husband, there is a good chance
that he would have committed at least one crime as well.
The second part of this picture is unthinkable today. We would view laws
criminalizing cohabitation and adultery as worthy of the Taliban, and would
almost certainly hold that they denied liberty without due process in violation of
article I, section 9. So the original constitutional landscape must have changed
since 1857.
We have to see that landscape as a whole. We can’t ignore the morality
code of mid-19th century Iowa as some sort of unconstitutional anachronism,
while treating the abortion law of mid-19th century Iowa as some sort of
constitutional guidepost for today.
Particularly that is true because in 1998, the citizens of Iowa voted by an
overwhelming majority to broaden article I, section 1 to include women.50 Thus,
article 1, section 1 now provides, “All men and women are, by nature, free and
equal, and have certain inalienable rights . . . .” Iowa Const. art. I, § 1 (emphasis
added).
I adhere to my previously expressed view that article I, section 1 is not an
independent source of constitutional rights. See Garrison v. New Fashion Pork
LLP, 977 N.W.2d 67, 93 (Iowa 2022) (Mansfield, J., concurring). It does not “add[]
anything to the more specific constitutional guarantees elsewhere in the Iowa
Bill of Rights.” Id. “Article I, section 1 is essentially a paraphrase of some of the
stirring language of our Declaration of Independence.” Id. at 92. In that sense, it
tells us what the principles of government should be rather than what the rules
of a specific government are. I tend to agree with the views of a late 19th-century
50See Iowa Sec’y of State, Iowa General Election - November 3, 1998: Official Canvass by
County, at 440, https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/pdf/10-8.pdf [https://perma.cc/BS8J-NL65].
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treatise, “It may well be said that this section of the Constitution summarizes all
the most sacred rights of the citizen, and that the declarations contained in the
remainder of Article I are simply more specific or particular statements of the
principles therein embodied.” S.M. Weaver, Iowa: Its Constitution and Laws 43
(1897).
But that doesn’t mean it lacks significance that in 1998 women were added
to article I, section 1 by constitutional amendment. Our original constitution did
not give women the same rights as men. For example, only white male citizens—
later male citizens—had the right to vote under article II, section 1. Iowa Const.
art. II, § 1 (1857). Only white males could serve in the general assembly. See id.
art. III, § 4. The right to trial by jury as recognized in article I, section 9 was a
right to a trial exclusively before “men.” Id. art. I, § 9.
The 1998 amendment was clearly meant to erase all that. So in
interpreting article I, section 9 regarding the rights of women, we should not be
bound by the precise scope of the constitutional rights that were protected in
1857 when it was largely a man’s constitution.
In 2014, I argued that when article II, section 5 of the Iowa Constitution
was reenacted in amended form, this ratified the contemporaneous
interpretation of that provision under which “infamous crime” meant a felony.
Chiodo v. Section 43.24 Panel, 846 N.W.2d 845, 862 (Iowa 2014) (Mansfield, J.,
specially concurring). Or to put the matter less legalistically, “[T]here has been
considerable water under the bridge since 1857.” Id. at 861. This reset principle
has been recognized in numerous other jurisdictions.51 What happened in 1998
51See McIntire v. State, 83 N.E. 1005, 1006 (Ind. 1908) (“It has been held that, when a
clause or provision of a Constitution or statute has been readopted after the same has been
construed by the courts of such state, it will be concluded that it was adopted with the
interpretation and construction which said courts had enunciated.”); Kuhn v. La. Highway
Comm’n, 142 So. 149, 150 (La. 1932) (“The presumption is that the Constitutional Convention
of 1898, of 1913, and of 1931, in retaining in the Constitution of each of those years the
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wasn’t exactly a reset. Instead of updating a specific constitutional guarantee,
the people of Iowa updated the general principles under which the specific
guarantees should be read. Hence, when we interpret the specific guarantees of
the Iowa Constitution, we must do so with attention to the rights of women as
they have evolved from 1857 to 1998. Although much of Democracy in America
rings true today, Tocqueville’s observations about women may no longer apply:
Thus Americans do not believe that man and woman have the
duty or the right to do the same things, but they show the same
esteem for the role of each of them, and they consider them as beings
whose value is equal although their destiny differs.
substance of the language of article 156 of the Constitution of 1879, intended that it should have
the same meaning that this court had given to it . . . ; otherwise the language would have been
changed.”); Wakem v. Inhabitants of Van Buren, 15 A.2d 873, 875 (Me. 1940) (“It is a general rule
that a reenactment, in substantially the same language, of a constitutional provision which had
been previously construed and explained by the court, carries with it the same meaning
previously attributed by the court to the earlier provision, in the absence of anything to indicate
that a different meaning was intended.”); Hitchcock v. State, 131 A.2d 714, 719 (Md. 1957)
(“Where a constitutional provision has received a judicial construction and then is incorporated
into a new or revised constitution, it will be presumed to have been re-adopted with the
knowledge of the previous construction and to have been intended to have the meaning given it
by that construction.”); In re Sizer, 254 S.W. 82, 84 (Mo. 1923) (en banc) (“The readoption of the
constitutional provision now under consideration so many times with the interpretation placed
upon it by this court, to say the least, is very persuasive evidence that the real meaning of the
provision was just what this court has so long been holding that it meant.”); Bodie v. Pollock, 195
N.W. 457, 458 (Neb. 1923) (per curiam) (“It is well settled in many, if not most, of the jurisdictions
of the country that, where a construction of constitutional provisions has been adopted and a
constitutional convention thereafter re-enacts such provisions, it re-enacts not only the language
of the provisions but the construction which has attached to the same.”); Craig v. State, 50 Tenn.
227, 230 (1871) (“The Convention which recently formed the new Constitution of this State,
permitted the clause in the declaration of rights, to remain unaltered, with a full knowledge, as
is to be presumed, of the decisions above mentioned, which, in our judgment, rests upon sound
principle, and ought not to be disturbed.”); LeCroy v. Hanlon, 713 S.W.2d 335, 340 (Tex. 1986)
(“The people ratified the court’s approach by passing an identical provision in the 1876
Constitution.”); see also Clark v. Ada Cnty. Bd. of Comm’rs, 572 P.2d 501, 507 (Idaho 1977)
(Lodge, Dist. J., specially concurring) (“That holding not only remains unchanged, it has been
re-enforced by the fact that . . . the people of Idaho have amended Article 18, Section 6 of the
Constitution several times, and each time have retained the elective position of county
assessor.”); McLinko v. Dep’t of State, 279 A.3d 539, 592 n.20 (Pa. 2022) (Wecht, J., concurring)
(“There can be no doubt that, where language is retained, its extant meaning and prior
constructions are relevant to its present interpretation.”).
73
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America v. 2, part III, ch. 12, 576 (Harvey C.
Mansfield & Delba Winthrop eds. & trans., Univ. of Chi. Press 2000) (1840).
While originalism is an important tool in constitutional interpretation, it
has its limits when considering a woman’s rights relating to her body, sex, and
procreation. Do originalists really believe that a woman has the same
constitutional right of autonomy over her body today as in 1857? Really? Maybe
Rosalind was referring to simplistic judicial originalism when she spoke of
“lawyers in the vacation” who “sleep between term and term, and then they
perceive not how time moves.” William Shakespeare, As You Like It act 3, sc. 2,
ll. 337–39.
The 1857 constitutional debates spanned thirty-nine days and 1,061
double-column pages. See 1–2 The Debates of the Constitutional Convention of
the State of Iowa (W. Blair Lord, rep., 1857),
https://publications.iowa.gov/7313/. Yet the word “woman” or “women”
appears only sixteen times. See id. By comparison, the debates contain
thirty-eight references to “horse” or “horses.” See id. That Iowa no longer exists
today.
C. The Majority’s Reliance Exclusively on the Democratic Process to
Define the Scope of a Woman’s Right of Autonomy Over Her Body is
Unconvincing. Apart from its mistaken reliance on the 2022 decision and the
illegal drug analogy, the majority offers only a brief explanation for why a woman
does not have a fundamental right of autonomy over her body. Essentially, it
says that the state has a long history of laws against abortion and that “history
supplies no support for abortion as a fundamental right.” I disagree with the
majority for several reasons.
First, we err if we define the fundamental right only in terms of the
restriction at issue. We didn’t say in LULAC that the fundamental right was
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“absentee voting.” See LULAC, 950 N.W.2d at 209. The right was voting, and the
question was whether the legislation improperly entrenched on that right. See
id. In Meyer v. Nebraska, a seminal substantive due process case, the United
States Supreme Court didn’t start by asking whether there was a fundamental
right to be taught German in school. 262 U.S. 390, 399–400 (1923). Rather, the
Court observed, that substantive due process
denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right
of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common
occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish
a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the
dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those
privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly
pursuit of happiness by free men.
Id. at 399. It then asked whether a state law that forbids teaching of modern
foreign languages before the eighth grade wrongfully intruded on that general
right and concluded that it did. Id. at 400–03; see also Pierce v. Soc’y of Sisters,
268 U.S. 510, 530, 534–35 (1925) (finding that a law requiring children to attend
public schools “unreasonably interfere[d] with the liberty of parents and
guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their
control”). So too here, we need to ask whether a woman has a fundamental right
of personal autonomy over her body as part of the “life” and “liberty” protected
by article I, section 9. I think that answer is clearly yes. We then should ask
whether a law practically banning abortion is an improper invasion of that
right—notwithstanding the State’s undeniable interest in promoting and
preserving human life.52
52Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization says that abortion is “fundamentally
different” from the other rights because an abortion ends a potential human life. 597 U.S. 215,
231 (2022). This observation tells me that there is a powerful governmental interest on the other
side, but it doesn’t mean there is no right in the first place. By analogy, we allow parental rights
to be terminated when the health and well-being of a child are threatened; yet that doesn’t alter
the reality that parents have a fundamental right to raise their own children. See, e.g., In re A.M.,
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Second, to the extent the majority invokes the democratic process and
today’s political actors, it bears noting that the legislature has decided not to
finish the democratic process that it started. To date, the 90th General Assembly
has not submitted for a popular vote the abortion-related constitutional
amendment that the 89th General Assembly approved. See 2021 Iowa Acts
ch. 187, § 2. That amendment would add a new section to article I of the Iowa
Constitution, stating,
Sec. 26. Life. To defend the dignity of all human life and
protect unborn children from efforts to expand abortion even to the
point of birth, we the people of the State of Iowa declare that this
Constitution does not recognize, grant, or secure a right to abortion
or require the public funding of abortion.
Id.
This hesitation to go to the people suggests that there may be two different
forms of consensus: one in the legislature and another in the privately held views
of Iowans on this intensely personal matter.
Along the same lines, it is also worth noting that Iowa’s abortion laws have
never targeted the person who has an abortion, only the abortion provider.
Existing Iowa law does not prohibit a pregnant woman from performing a
medication abortion herself. This approach seems to be unique in our law. Where
else do we punish the aider-and-abetter but not the person they aid and abet?
This tells me that, in the end, all of us—even those who supported the enactment
of chapter 146E—may feel uncomfortable about blaming a woman who has had
an abortion. To put it another way, even abortion opponents seem to recognize
that there is a zone of personal autonomy that the state should leave alone—or
at least not regulate directly.
843 N.W.2d 100, 112–13 (Iowa 2014). So, I disagree with Dobbs’s effort to separate the abortion
decision from all other decisions made by a woman over her own body.
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Moreover, in such a deeply private matter, I suspect none of us—
particularly if we are men—know the truth. “Only a Woman, divine, could know
all that a woman can suffer.” Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop 173
(Virago Press 1981) (1927). I am certain that many women who are close friends
and relatives of mine have made a personal decision to have an abortion during
their lifetime, while I remain ignorant of that fact.
IV. The Fundamental Right to Bodily Autonomy Embraces the
Decision to End a Pregnancy; State Laws and Regulations That Deny a
Reasonable Opportunity to Make that Decision Are Invalid.
I believe the right of autonomy over one’s body includes a limited but
realistic opportunity to end a pregnancy. Thus, I continue to disagree with my
colleagues in 2018 who found a wide-ranging fundamental right to an abortion
with no endpoint other than birth. See PPH 2018, 915 N.W.2d at 249 (Mansfield,
J., dissenting). But I also differ with today’s majority that finds no right to
terminate a pregnancy at all. I agree with Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion
concurring in the judgment in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,
where he reasoned that the underlying logic of Roe does not require the woman’s
right to terminate a pregnancy to extend until viability, that the viability rule
does not take into account other human concerns such as the prevention of fetal
pain, and that a rule allowing abortions up until the sixteenth week would
provide a reasonable opportunity to make a decision to end a pregnancy.
597 U.S. 215, 351–52, 356 (2022) (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment).
As he stated, “[T]here is nothing inherent in the right to choose that requires it
to extend to viability or any other point, so long as a real choice is provided.” Id.
at 354.
Therefore, I would evaluate state regulations and restrictions on abortions
before the sixteenth week using intermediate scrutiny and the Casey undue
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burden standard. See Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa., 505 U.S. at 877–78. This
means that the state could not selectively ban telemedicine for abortions while
allowing it for all other medical procedures. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland,
Inc. v. Iowa Bd. of Med. (PPH 2015), 865 N.W.2d 252, 269 (Iowa 2015). But
reasonable waiting periods of twenty-four or perhaps even seventy-two hours
could be upheld if they are part of a good-faith effort to ensure a fully informed
decision. PPH 2018, 915 N.W.2d at 250 (Mansfield, J., dissenting). After the
fifteenth week, the State could ban abortion in the absence of a special
circumstance.
My colleagues in the majority echo the Dobbs majority in criticizing the
undue burden standard as unworkable, but I think they are on the wrong side
of that debate. The undue burden standard requires us to “weigh the extent of
the burden against the strength of the state’s justification in the context of each
individual statute or regulation.” PPH 2015, 865 N.W.2d at 264 (quoting Planned
Parenthood Ariz., Inc. v. Humble, 753 F.3d 905, 914 (9th Cir. 2014), abrogated
by Dobbs, 597 U.S. 215). We did not have difficulty applying that standard to
telemedicine, unanimously, in 2015. As I explained in my 2018 dissent, prior to
Dobbs, the undue burden test had resulted in a fairly consistent and predictable
jurisprudence on waiting periods. See PPH 2018, 915 N.W.2d at 250–52.
True, as new restrictions on abortion emerged, it became necessary to
litigate them under Casey. But this occurred largely because states had
repeatedly and intentionally tested Casey’s boundaries in ingenious ways. Would
we say that Brown v. Board of Education, 348 U.S. 886 (1954), was unworkable
because some states repeatedly tested its boundaries after 1954?
Conceptually, the undue burden test—like the Anderson-Burdick test in
election law cases—allows courts to make “hard judgments,” giving deference
where appropriate to legislative judgment while prohibiting out-and-out
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obstruction of the right.53 As the majority states, “Intermediate scrutiny for
election laws . . . allows courts to balance competing constitutional
requirements of ensuring fair and orderly elections against the right to vote.” No
one on our court suggests the Anderson-Burdick test is unworkable for the
election cases we have seen repeatedly in recent years; rather, we have adopted
it under the Iowa Constitution. See Democratic Senatorial Campaign Comm.,
950 N.W.2d at 6–7. If a form of intermediate scrutiny that balances the weight
of different interests is workable in the context of voting, what makes it so
unworkable when applied to abortion?
More to the point, workability isn’t just a question of how much “work”
judges have to do when they apply a legal rule. We consider the practical effects
of the rule on society as a whole. For example, in Burnett v. Smith, we decided to
overrule Godfrey v. State, 962 N.W.2d 84 (Iowa 2021), a case that recognized a
direct cause of action for damages under the Iowa Constitution. 990 N.W.2d 289,
307 (Iowa 2023). We noted that Godfrey was legally wrong and had complicated
our jurisprudence. Id. at 298, 304. We found that it had also become a vehicle
for asserting either meritless claims of constitutional violation in otherwise
nonconstitutional cases or duplicative claims of state constitutional violation in
cases where claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 were already available. Id. at 301–03.
53See Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 789–90 (1983) (“Only after weighing all these
factors is the reviewing court in a position to decide whether the challenged provision is
unconstitutional. The results of this evaluation will not be automatic; as we have recognized,
there is ‘no substitute for the hard judgments that must be made.’ ” (citations omitted) (quoting
Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974))); see also Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 434 (1992)
(“[A] more flexible standard applies. A court considering a challenge to a state election law must
weigh ‘the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First
and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate’ against ‘the precise interests
put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule,’ taking into
consideration ‘the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff’s
rights.’ ” (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789)).
79
A rational basis standard governing abortion may not be difficult for Iowa
judges to administer, but we need to examine its broader effects. Under the
majority’s new legal framework, we now ask only if an abortion restriction is
rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Realistically, rational basis review
means that practically any ban or restriction on abortion will be upheld.
Supposedly, Racing Ass’n of Central Iowa v. Fitzgerald (RACI), 675 N.W.2d 1(Iowa 2004), changed the law so that Iowa now follows a rational basis test “with
teeth.” See, e.g., AFSCME Iowa Council 61 v. State, 928 N.W.2d 21, 35
(Iowa 2019). But those teeth have had no bite; by my count, we have decided
approximately forty rational basis cases since RACI, and we have never sustained
a rational basis challenge to a law or regulation.54 Today’s case makes that
forty-one.
Chapter 146E will severely restrict abortions in Iowa. In most instances,
unless costs are too much of a barrier, the woman living in Iowa who wishes to
end a pregnancy will get an abortion by heading to Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska,
or Wisconsin. To that extent, things won’t change. But the availability of
healthcare will change. Medical students and practicing ob-gyns will elect not to
come here in the first place, or they may pick up and leave. One-third of Iowa
counties are already classified as “maternity care deserts.” See March of Dimes,
Where You Live Matters: Maternity Care in Iowa 1 (2023),
https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/assets/s3/reports/mcd/Maternity-
Care-Report-Iowa.pdf [https://perma.cc/2DL4-GDXB]. This will get worse.
54See Behm, 922 N.W.2d at 578 (Waterman, J., concurring) (“RACI II, as a practical
matter, has been limited to its facts. We have never relied on RACI II to strike down another
municipal or state legislative enactment.”).
80
V. Iowa Code Chapter 146E Denies a Woman an Opportunity to Make
a Decision Not to Have the Child and Is Therefore Unconstitutional.
In my view, the near-universal ban on abortions after the sixth week in
Iowa Code chapter 146E directly and substantially interferes with the woman’s
fundamental right not to procreate. At the sixth week, a woman may not even
know she is pregnant and has almost certainly not sought medical care for her
pregnancy. The six-week mark does not allow enough time for a woman to make
a decision whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. The adoption of this
timing is not accidental: Iowa Code chapter 146E is designed to end, and will
end, most abortions in Iowa. Therefore, the law is an undue burden on a woman’s
constitutional right to exercise autonomy over what happens within her body
and to decide whether or not to have a child.
Life is messy. There are pregnancies that result from failed birth control,
from intoxication, from pressure to have sex that doesn’t legally amount to rape,
from false promises by the father-to-be, from a youth’s lack of impulse control,
and so on. These are just a few examples. Many of these situations would not be
considered “voluntary” under our law. See, e.g., State v. Ortiz, 766 N.W.2d 244,
251 (Iowa 2009) (defining “voluntary” as “the product of . . . free and deliberate
choice rather than intimidation, coercion, or deception”); State v. Garcia,
756 N.W.2d 216, 220 (Iowa 2008) (equating “voluntary” with “freely made,
uncoerced, reasoned, and informed”). So, the net effect of the six-week ban is
that it forbids many women from ever making a truly voluntary decision to have
children or not. That is unacceptable to me.
Again, I acknowledge the deep sincerity and goodwill of all who support
chapter 146E. They believe that life begins at conception and that any abortion
is the killing of a human being. But I can’t help thinking that if the arguments
against abortion were as powerful as the supporters of chapter 146E think they
81
are, they would persuade any woman who becomes pregnant. Coercive laws
would not be needed. Indeed, I find it somewhat ironic that after initially enacting
laws intended to allow a pregnant woman to make a more considered decision,
see 2017 Iowa Acts ch. 108, § 1 (codified at Iowa Code § 146A.1 (2018))
(mandating waiting periods and the provision of information); 2020 Iowa Acts ch.
1110, § 2 (codified at Iowa Code § 146A.1 (2021)) (same), the legislature now has
determined that—as a practical matter—she shouldn’t be able to make a decision
at all.
In the end, the question in this case is whether a woman has a
constitutional right of autonomy over her body as part of the due process
guarantee of liberty. If she does, and I believe she does, then a law that takes
away any realistic opportunity to decide not to carry a pregnancy to term violates
article I, section 9. Because Iowa Code chapter 146E is unconstitutional, I would
affirm the temporary injunction enjoining it from taking effect.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.
Christensen, C.J., and Waterman, J., join this dissent.