Lawsuit challenges Iowa law on abortion

DES MOINES, Iowa — A lawsuit challenging the nation’s most restrictive abortion law was filed Tuesday in Iowa, a state that for years was largely left out of Republican efforts to overturn abortion protections and where the Democratic attorney general has refused to defend the law.

If allowed to take effect July 1 as planned, the law would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, around the sixth week of pregnancy. Abortion-rights groups say that’s a time when many women do not know they are pregnant.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America announced the filing of the complaint in Polk County District Court in Des Moines. The lawsuit argues that the law violates the Iowa Constitution by banning nearly all abortions and putting women’s health at risk. It seeks an injunction to halt the law’s implementation. Litigation could take years.

Until the 2016 election, Iowa had little to no role in the broad GOP effort to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy until a fetus is viable.

The election flipped control of the Iowa Senate, putting Republicans in charge of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time in two decades. Up to that point, Democrats had maintained enough political power to curtail most Republican anti-abortion attempts.