Iowa Supreme Court hears oral arguments on fetal heartbeat law

The Iowa Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments on whether it should lift an injunction prohibiting the law’s enforcement. The law, passed last July, protects unborn babies once physicians can detect their heartbeats or after about six weeks of gestation. But just days after Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the bill into law, Polk County District Court Judge Joseph Seidlin barred the state from enforcing it. The state appealed directly to the state supreme court less than a week later, and the Court granted review shortly after.

What are the two sides arguing? Lawyers for Planned Parenthood argued—both in oral arguments and in a brief previously supplied to the court—that the heartbeat law creates an “undue burden” on women in Iowa, and violates the state’s constitution. They say the Iowa Supreme Court already decided in 2022 that the legal standard for review regarding laws protecting unborn babies is the undue burden standard. Planned Parenthood also argues the Iowa Supreme Court deadlocked on a case involving a 2018 law that closely mirrored the heartbeat law in question. That deadlock effectively affirmed a lower court's ruling that the law was unconstitutional because it created an undue burden for Iowa women.

Lawyers for the state of Iowa argued—both in oral arguments and in their written brief—that the district court failed to understand that 2022 decision properly. State lawyers said that the decision didn’t acknowledge a right to obtain an abortion in the Iowa Constitution. Attorneys for the state also argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision ruled that laws protecting unborn babies didn’t have to avoid creating an undue burden on their mothers.

Dig deeper: Read R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s column in WORLD Opinions arguing that former President Donald Trump blundered in his recent decision on whether states should decide their own abortion laws.