Vice President Kamala Harris is making an Iowa law that took effect this morning part of her campaign against former President Donald Trump.
“Today Iowa put in place a Trump abortion ban, which makes Iowa the 22nd state in our country to have a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said in a campaign video, “and this ban is going to take effect before many women even know they’re pregnant.”
Iowa’s law bans abortion after fetal activity can be detected, which is around the sixth week of a pregnancy. “One in three women of reproductive age in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said, “so what we need to do is vote ’cause I’m going to tell you something, when I am president of the United States, I will sign into law the protections for reproductive freedom.”
In a written statmenent, Luke Wolff, a spokesman for the Iowa Republican Party, said the Heartbeat Bill has exceptions for rape, incest, medical emergencies and fetal abnormalities and “Democrats continue to fear monger Iowans into thinking they have to choose between protecting women or protecting babies.”
Trump, at a rally in Minnesota on Saturday, called Harris “an absolute radical on abortion.” Trump appointed three of the six U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 and Trump has said the ruling leaves it up to states to decide abortion policy.
For the past 40 years, the GOP’s national platform had called for federal restrictions on abortion, but Trump’s campaign led development of the party platform for 2024 that says the abortion issue should be left to the states.
Harris visited Iowa last July, two weeks after Governor Reynolds signed the “fetal heartbeat” bill into law. “As I travel the country, it becomes clear to me that so many people in these state legislatures don’t even know how women’s bodies work,” Harris said to an audience in Des Moines.
Iowa Congressman Randy Feenstra, a Republican from Hull, issued a written statement this morning after the abortion restrictions took effect in Iowa. “As a father of four and a Christian, I believe that unborn life must be protected. My faith teaches me that every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and that every person deserves to have the chance to further God’s kingdom,” Feenstra said.
Also this morning, the Iowa Democratic Party hosted an online forum with a Des Moines doctor who said the law will exacerbate the loss of OB-GYNs in Iowa, especially in rural Iowa.