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Children’s and adults’ lives will be shattered and ended as a direct result of Iowa Republicans’ abortion ban and that enables the ban to take effect later in July.

Despite Republicans’ frequent claims that in state government, it’s notable that is being allowed to take effect by the narrowest of margins – even after Gov. Kim Reynolds almost fully remade the state Supreme Court. Reynolds throughout her political career has made clear the primacy of abortion bans in her decision-making.

The majority that joined Friday’s ruling comprises . Justice Matthew McDermott’s ruling — by repeating the state’s false and manipulative labeling that the ban is tied to detection of a “fetal heartbeat.” In fact, the most that can be said is abortion will be prohibited after cardiac activity can be detected, about six weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period, in many cases before she knows she is pregnant. A “heartbeat” comes weeks later.

More:I want to be a mother. Iowa politicians’ abortion and IVF choices limit my options.

Such indifference to substance and nuance has infected Iowa’s six-week ban since the Legislature first tried to implement one in 2018, and it infects McDermott’s ruling. “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,” he writes, casually dismissing the idea that anything that happened after the 19th century might be relevant to . McDermott also accepts at face value that extreme abortion regulation advances “protection of maternal health and safety” and “preservation of the integrity of the medical profession,” .

Republican-appointed dissenters say ruling gives no regard to women's autonomy

Dissenting justices held nothing back in accusing the majority and Statehouse Republicans of indifference to women’s health and autonomy. They devastatingly spell out many ways in which the narrow exceptions in the law are almost wholly illusory. They cite dozens of examples, some hypothetical but many in , about how girls and women can be made to endure awful pain because they matter so little in the eyes of the court majority.

“In my opinion, the only female lives that this statute treats with any meaningful 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,” wrote Chief Justice Susan Christensen, Reynolds’ first appointment to the court. “All in the name of promoting unborn life — or, more accurately, birth.”

Christensen, as is typical for her, draws on her in sketching out realities that are inconsistent with Iowa Republicans’ short-sighted belief that “protecting life” is a straightforward matter. Under the law, victims of rape and incest have brief (but, confusingly, not identical) windows in which they can legally get an abortion after six weeks — but, among other problems, that requires immediately identifying and bravely reporting the abuse. “The State’s ‘exceptions’ for these survivors throw significant barriers in front of them by requiring actions that are unrealistic and unfair,” Christensen wrote.

More:6-week abortion ban can take effect, Iowa Supreme Court rules, ending injunction

Justice Edward Mansfield and Christensen both, thankfully, note the history of Iowa’s Constitution and state government’s treatment of women, relying in part on the , whose age forced him to leave the court in 2022 as the last Democratic-appointed justice of the Iowa Supreme Court.

“When our constitution was adopted, a father could sue a man for seducing his daughter,” Mansfield noted in his separate dissent. He also accused the majority of misrepresenting the holding on abortion he wrote , going beyond what he actually wrote to claim that the Iowa Constitution definitively had nothing to say about women’s reproductive freedom.  

Mansfield and Justice Thomas Waterman have consistently opposed that, for a few years, made it almost impossible to restrict abortion access. But, Mansfield wrote Friday, “Instead of a constitutional rule that gives no weight to the State’s interest in human life (as in 2018), 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.’ … So, regrettably, does today’s decision.”

Everyone will suffer as more OB-GYN care disappears

that said, in part, “We will continue to develop policies that encourage strong families, which includes promoting adoption and protecting in vitro fertilization.” But, as Christensen noted, that with the standards about “life” that Reynolds and lawmakers and judges have enshrined.

The problems the abortion law will create are wide-ranging. Iowa already is worst in the nation in its proportion of doctors who can provide OB-GYN care, and we should expect fewer people to enter the profession or want to practice it here. The ruling’s legal reasoning, elected Democrats and Christensen said, could place access to contraception and surrogacy in jeopardy. More girls and women will endure permanent losses from unwanted births. At bottom, Mansfield wrote, “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.”

What’s next? , will try to protect girls and women and help them find care elsewhere. (Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that Iowans could count on his state to be a “safe haven.”) are likely to continue. While Planned Parenthood’s legal challenge of the six-week ban continues, its avenues for attacking it are severely restricted. The Iowa Supreme Court is final arbiter of the Iowa Constitution’s meaning, so its holding Friday will stand. No obvious help is on the horizon at the federal level.

This law is no victory for life. Cruel and cowardly lawmakers should be shown the door.

In Iowa, no matter their overall esteem for Reynolds’ leadership, voters need to punish the lawmakers who have shown so little regard for women’s rights.

In cowardice, those lawmakers have to ask Iowa voters to amend the Constitution to rule out abortion protections — maybe because polling indicates Iowans support legal abortion.

Those lawmakers have sentenced all Iowa girls and women to a bleak reproductive care landscape with far too few providers.

And, while they insist otherwise, those lawmakers make clear by their actions that they, at bottom, value girls and women only for their ability as a vessel to nurture a fetus until birth.

Three justices hand-picked by Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds say that is abominable. That shows how far Republicans have strayed from the wishes of Iowans they purport to represent.

By fully taking away women’s rights to health care, Iowa is reversing over 50 years of progress. The only way to restore those rights is to elect a government that will change the law.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register's editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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