Please take action today to tell Gov. Kim Reynolds to veto a theocratic bill to outlaw abortion care in your state at six weeks of pregnancy.
In what appears to be a twisted competition among conservative states to see which can strip women of their autonomy most completely, Iowa lawmakers have struck the hardest blow yet. The state Legislature passed the nation’s strictest abortion law earlier this week, outlawing abortions six weeks into a woman’s pregnancy. Many women do not know they are pregnant that early into a pregnancy. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, only 9 percent of abortions performed in Iowa in 2016 occured before six weeks of pregnancy.
As we’ve said before, the Christian Right has always been the primary opposition to women’s right to abortion. The American Family Association, a conservative Christian group based in Mississippi, released a statement praising the bill for reflecting its ideological belief that life begins at conception, and that a woman’s body is not her own past that point. If this bill is signed by the governor, it is intended as a test case to take to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe V. Wade.
As Erin Davison-Rippley, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland said, “This bill is dangerous, it is unconstitutional and it is just conscionable.”