There was interest inside and outside the courtroom as the Iowa Supreme Court held oral arguments on the fetal heartbeat law. A group of people who back the law gathered in the parking lot of the Judicial Building at noon Thursday to pray and then entered the courtroom for the arguments.
Opponents of the law held a rally on the courthouse lawn and said, “We are going to shout from the rooftops: ‘No bans now. No bans ever.'” Ruth Richardson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of North Central States said, “I am so grateful to be in this space with all of you today because in this time what we need more than anything else is community. We need to show up and we need to speak out and bodily autonomy.”
Republican lawmakers who voted for the law in July were in the courtroom. “It’s just a waiting game now to see what they do,” according to Senator Sandy Salmon of Janesville. Salmon also voted for the 2018 six week abortion ban that the Iowa Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional. “We’ve got different justices on there now, so things could turn around pretty easily,” Salmon says, “so we’ll just see how that all pans out.” After the legal arguments were over, the legal director of the ACLU of Iowa told reporters it’s never wise to speculate about the questions the justices asked.
Peter Im an attorney for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told reporters they’re hoping the Supreme Court sends the case back to the district court. “This case, it was about five days old when it was appealed,” Im says. “…Ultimately I do think the case would probably end up back here, but it would end up back here in a situation where the arguments and everything are much more developed.”
The Iowa Board of Medicine has developed rules for how it would administer the law if the court lets it go into effect. The law does include exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest and for medical emergencies that endanger the life of the pregnant woman. The law also allows abortion when fetal abnormalities are fatal.