[Edited to add HF 2478 to the list of bills that survived the funnel.]
The first funnel in the Iowa General Assembly came and went on Friday. The Iowa House and Senate narrowed the list of active bills, culling every one that hadn’t yet been voted out of a committee. My next series of posts will look at bills on different subjects — which ones survived and which ones ended up in the graveyard of discarded legislation. (Of course, no bill is guaranteed to stay dead as long as the General Assembly remains in session. Our legislators have ways of resurrecting the rotting corpses of their favorite bills right up until the day they adjourn. But I can’t worry about that until it happens.)
First up, Abortion.
ALIVE:
HJR 2004/SJR 2001: The Iowa Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down restrictive abortion bills on the grounds that the Iowa Constitution guarantees women the right to make their own medical decisions, including whether or not to have an abortion. This infuriated evangelicals in the Statehouse. These joint resolutions are their response — they want to amend the Iowa Constitution to declare that it no longer recognizes any right to an abortion. The Senate already approved their version. The House still has to vote on theirs — but they will certainly pass it. To become law, the amendment must pass the General Assembly again next year, and then be put to a statewide vote in a general election.
House Study Bill 678: This bill is a classic TRAP law (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers). If passed, it will require all abortion facilities to be licensed by the state, with annual inspections, additional onerous regulations, and a $2000 filing fee. Its floor manager is Holly Brink (R) Mahaska County.
House Study Bill 672: This bill claims to be about promoting “informed consent” for medication abortions but would in fact force abortion providers to lie to their patients. This bill repeats the demonstrably false claim that medication induced abortions can be “reversed” after the first medication has been given. No peer-reviewed, double-blind studies to that effect have ever been published in any reputable medical journal, no medical school teaches “abortion reversal”, and no abortion providers offer it as a service. Filed by Shannon Lundgren (R) Dubuque County.
Senate File 2215: This bill would force women seeking an abortion to have an invasive, unnecessary, costly ultrasound 72 hours prior to her abortion procedure. If that sounds familiar to you, that is because this exact bill passed a few years ago, went before the Iowa Supreme Court, and was declared unconstitutional. Now that Governor Reynolds has added a couple more evangelical partisan hacks to the Supreme Court, Brad Zaun (R) Polk County wants them to take another look at his favorite patriarchal zealotry.
House File 2478: This bill would require death certificates for any miscarriage or abortion as early as 12 weeks. Current law sets the fetal age at 20 weeks. It also changes the word “fetus” to “bodily remains.” The bill would force parents to bury or cremate the remains if the loss of pregnancy occurs in a hospital.
DEAD:
HF 2390: This bill would have required any physician who provided services at an ambulatory surgical center to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. This bill doesn’t mention the word “abortion” anywhere, but if passed it would have put almost every abortion provider in the state out of business. Its author, Holly Brink, clearly hoped this would slide under the radar before anyone realized it was about abortion. But for now, it is dead.
HF 2352, by Jon Jacobson, Pottawattamie County: This bill would have made it easier for women who have had an abortion to sue the doctor who performed it — even if she wanted the abortion at the time, understood, and consented to it. The bill would have granted fetuses the same due process and equal protection under the law afforded to an adult.
Senate File 2033: Here is one that failed, but should have survived the funnel. SF 2033, filed by 15 Democrats, would have reinstated federal funding for family planning services that was stripped from Planned Parenthood last year. It is one of the few bills filed this year that would absolutely would have reduced the number of abortions performed in Iowa. Easy, widespread access to birth control and education reduces unwanted pregnancies. It has worked every time it has been tried and scientific studies back that up. But our conservative legislators don’t care about any of that. They refused to bring this bill to a vote.