Iowa heartbeat law goes into effect next week

An Iowa district court judge earlier this week ordered the law to go into effect on Monday, July 29, according to the Associated Press. Iowa lawmakers passed the law last year and pro-abortion groups challenged it. A district court put an injunction in place preventing officials from enforcing the measure after Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it into law. But the Iowa Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that since women in the state didn’t have a constitutional right to kill their unborn babies via abortion, the injunction must be removed. The pro-abortion groups tried again to challenge the law but the Iowa Supreme Court refused to hear that challenge.

So what’s going to happen next week? Abortionists cannot kill unborn babies who have a detectable heartbeat—which most babies have after about six weeks of pregnancy—starting on Monday. The law does provide exceptions for medical emergencies, instances of rape and incest, miscarriages where not all parts of the baby are expelled from the woman’s womb, or abnormalities in the baby that are incompatible with life. Up until Monday, unborn babies younger than 20 weeks are not protected from abortion.

Dig deeper: Read Christina Grube’s report in The Sift about the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision to override the temporary injunction.