NARAL Condemns Potential Iowa Abortion Ban

At this moment, the members of the Iowa state legislature are debating legislation that will ban abortion before most women will even know that they are pregnant. NARAL Pro-Choice America National Communications Director Kaylie Hanson Long issued the following statement:

“Anti-choice legislators across Iowa have made it their mission to erode the rights of women and families rather than look out for women of Iowa’s best interests. At this moment, the House is debating a cruel and unconstitutional plan to ban abortion before a woman even knows she is pregnant, intentionally preventing access to abortion care completely. NARAL opposes this ban with full force and we are mobilizing our members to demand that their legislators do not advance this extreme attack on our right to access essential healthcare. We know that when abortion access is restricted the number of deaths and injuries to women goes up, and it’s shameful that Iowa legislators are playing politics with our lives.”

Background:

S.F. 359 is part of a growing national trend that is immensely concerning. Similar bills have been introduced all across the country, with the first being signed into law in North Dakota. Fortunately, in the few states such bills have passed, the courts have intervened. Sadly, it is a similar attack to the unconstitutional abortion ban heard in the U.S. House of Representatives in which anti-choice politicians saved a seat in the audience for a sonogram machine and made clear they were unconcerned with a woman’s right to her own bodily autonomy and legal right to access abortion. The Supreme Court made very clear in Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to an abortion, that restrictions on pre-viability abortion violate a woman’s right to privacy.