'Resounding victory': Iowa Supreme Court deadlocks on 6-week abortion ban, keeping procedure legal

16 June 2023

A Republican-backed 6-week abortion ban was blocked by the Iowa Supreme Court Friday, ABC News reports.

Per NBC News, the decision makes way for "the procedures to remain legal until about the 20th week of pregnancy."

Furthermore, NBC notes "the ruling could have ramifications in pending decisions in courts in states across the U.S., where six-week bans enacted by conservative state legislatures remain temporarily blocked."

Last month, a South Carolina court blocked a 6-week abortion ban proposed by state GOP lawmakers, granting abortion providers a victory by keeping the procedure legal.

Abortion groups and providers of Iowa also declared a victory Friday, as Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa wrote via Twitter, "The Iowa Supreme Court just preserved abortion access in Iowa by blocking a near-total abortion ban from taking effect. This is a resounding victory for Iowans and reproductive freedom. #BansOffOurBodies"

Meanwhile, Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds denounced the high court's decision, writing in a statement, "To say that today's lack of action by the Iowa Supreme Court is a disappointment is an understatement. Not only does it disregard Iowa voters who elected representatives willing to stand up for the rights of unborn children, but it has sided with a single judge in a single county who struck down Iowa's legislation based on principles that now have been flat-out rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. There is no fundamental right to abortion and any law restricting it should be reviewed on a rational basis standard -- a fact acknowledged today by three of the justices. Still, without an affirmative decision, there is no justice for the unborn."

According to ABC, Justice Thomas Waterman wrote, "The State appealed [the January 2019 ruling], and now asks our court to do something that has never happened in Iowa history: to simultaneously bypass the legislature and change the law, to adopt rational basis review, and then to dissolve an injunction to put a statute into effect for the first time in the same case in which that very enactment was declared unconstitutional years earlier."

He added, "In our view, it is legislating from the bench to take a statute that was moribund when it was enacted and has been enjoined for four years and then to put it into effect."

NBC reports, "While the ruling Friday drew upon a certain amount of precedent and legal argument, the decision was more narrowly tailored," as "letting the injunction stand was simply a result of the court being deadlocked, not the product of an overt legal opinion to block reinstatement of the ban."

The judges wrote, "One member of the court is conflicted out from this case, so the court is deadlocked 3–3 and the district court ruling is affirmed by operation of law."

ABC News' full report is available at this link. NBC News' report is here.

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