William R. Staplin is a former scientist specializing in utilizing molecular biology techniques to investigate RNA plant and animal viruses, research and development of vaccines to protect against infectious viruses; husband to Ruth A. Staplin, a longtime SPPG employee and political wonk; father to two independently minded young adults; cancer and spinal cord disability survivor; and a supporter of women’s reproductive rights, LGTBQ+, and Black and Brown Lives Matter. He is also a full-time greyhound owner and greyhound cafeteria worker.
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to women’s health care rights in 2022, when the conservative majority ruled in favor of Dobbs in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women Health Organization. The 5-4 decision overturned the Roe vs. Wade precedent, which since 1973 had guaranteed a woman or girl the constitutional right to an abortion. The conservative majority’s decision to allow the 50 states to regulate abortion led to a massive upheaval in women’s and girls’ basic access to health care, and in turn maternal and infant care.
Many Republican-controlled states quickly enacted abortion bans, or allowed laws from before Roe to take effect. Fourteen states (mostly in the southeastern U.S.) have total abortion bans.
Rewind to March 30th, 2016. During a televised town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin, MSNBC host Chris Matthews pressed then Republican front-runner Donald John Trump on whether there “has to be some form of punishment” for a woman having an abortion. Trump, sounding cornered, agreed that there should be.
In a way, it was an academic question at the time. Roe was still in place, so all women and girls retained some right to an abortion. How things would change. One campaign promise that Trump did keep was naming three relatively young justices to lifelong appointments on the Supreme Court.
The new conservative supermajority overturned Roe in 2022. Millions of women immediately lost their their bodily autonomy and access to reproductive health care. Once-protected health care systems were being dismantled before our eyes. While some blue states have guaranteed abortion rights, they may not be safe if Trump becomes president. A Republican-controlled Congress could approve a nationwide abortion ban, or Trump could use a 19th-century law known as the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationally, even without new legislation.
THE HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF IOWA’S NEAR-TOTAL ABORTION BAN
Until recently, abortion was legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks. But Iowa has joined the group of states with near-total abortion bans. In June, four conservative Iowa Supreme Court justices allowed the state to enforce a law Republicans enacted in 2023, under which almost all abortions are prohibited after an ultrasound can detect embryonic cardiac activity. That often occurs around six weeks—before many people realize they are pregnant.
Earlier this year, an Alabama Supreme Court ruling on the “wrongful death” of “extrauterine children” threatened the availability of in vitro fertilization in that state counting them as children. Republicans in the Iowa House approved House File 2575, a “fetal homicide” bill that defined “unborn person” as “an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization to live birth.”
The bill ostensibly addressed non-consensual “termination” or “serious injury to a human pregnancy.” Medical practitioners warned the bill could make it a felony for IVF clinics to intentionally or unintentionally destroy embryos. Dr. Amy Sparks, a laboratory director at a southeast Iowa IVF clinic, wrote in a guest column for the Des Moines Register, “To put it simply, this bill could threaten patient’s access to fertility treatments. It puts health care providers like me at risk of being prosecuted, making it impossible for us to do our jobs and help people start families.”
While Iowa Senate Republicans did not take up that bill this year, they had passed a nearly-identical bill in 2019. It was abhorrent for so many legislators to vote for this repressive bill.
Across the country, women are concerned about economic hardship following pregnancy. They are concerned about having their reproductive health irrevocably damaged due to nonintervention by OB/GYNs who fear being arrested or losing their licenses. In circumstances such as nonviable pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, and pregnancies caused by rape or incest, women and girls in abortion ban states are at the mercy of their own personal support systems to reserve an appointment and to travel to an out of state health care clinic. Many men in so-called red states are standing up for their female partners’ economic, medical, and personal well-being.
Women rightly fear that without bodily autonomy, they could be denied health care. It is no wonder that recent polls suggest women view the presidential candidates’ stance on abortion as important as the economy and significantly more important than immigration.
Driven by political cohesiveness or faith-based ideologies, Republican-controlled state legislatures have used their power to ban abortion long before viability. In Iowa, state law gives more rights to a differentiating accumulation of fertilized egg cells around six weeks after the last menstrual cycle than to a pregnant person. At six weeks gestation, an embryo measures six millimeters (roughly the length of a pea), and as mentioned above, the woman or girl may not know she is pregnant.
While self-styled “pro-life” Republicans lauded the Iowa Supreme Court for its recent abortion ruling, Iowa Democratic Party state chair Rita Hart described the new law as a “draconian abortion ban.” Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer spoke the awful truth: “Make no mistake, between now and Election Day a woman will die because of this abortion ban. A woman will be injured permanently, her reproductive future will be injured permanently because of this ban.”
THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF ABORTION BANS
Circling back to the economic effects of abortion bans, research shows that being forced to carry an unplanned pregnancy is economically devastating for the woman or girl and her family or dependents. It can strain her entire social safety net.
Even though unintended pregnancies declined between 2011 and 2018, Medicaid data suggest the cost of unintended pregnancies increased from $4.6 billion to $5.5 billion, respectively, with young women (ages 20 – 29) bearing the brunt of the direct costs ($3 billion). Pregnancy can derail higher education, degree advancement, and job opportunities that offer health care and career advancement. The woman or girl may lose a support system because of shame or social stigma.
In short, data show that restrictive abortion bans have direct negative economic consequences on pregnant women and girls. These lost wages, due to the women/girls working less and being forced to carry a child to term subsequently hurts that state’s economy. Iowa’s abortion ban is already contributing to our state’s “brain drain” of young professionals.
ABORTION AND IOWA’S 2024 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS
Although Iowans will not vote directly on abortion this November (since Republicans abandoned a proposed state constitutional amendment), abortion may still be a central issue for many voters in the 2024 elections. Governor Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird (both staunch opponents of abortion rights) are not on the ballot. But all four Republican U.S. representatives from Iowa are up for re-election. They have refused to sign onto H.R.7056, known as the “Access to Family Building” Act, which protects the right to fertility treatments.
All four U.S. House members from Iowa welcomed our state’s new abortion ban. Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) all voted for a nearly identical bill in 2018. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) was not serving in the legislature that year, but has supported banning abortions. These politicians fail to appreciate the damage done to Iowa women and girls, who have lost their autonomy. Their stance points a broader strategic failure by Republicans to understand that reproductive health care is connected to the economy. Forcing someone to carry a pregnancy to term will reduce her prospects for a successful trade or career choice. Given the shortage of affordable child care, it will also exacerbate Iowa’s workforce shortages.
IA-01: Two-term incumbent Miller-Meeks faces Democrat Christina Bohannan. Miller-Meeks is a former nurse, Army veteran, ophthalmologist, and Iowa Department of Public Health Director. Bohannan is a University of Iowa Law professor and a former engineer with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Bohannan has pointed out that Miller-Meeks co-sponsored the 2021-22 Life at Conception Act, which defined “life” beginning at fertilization, and banned all abortions without exception. Although Miller-Meeks didn’t co-sponsor that bill in the current Congress, voters in IA-01 should remember her past position.
IA-02: Two-term incumbent Hinson faces Democratic challenger and small business owner Sarah Corkery, who has made reproductive rights a central campaign issue. Corkery said during her speech on the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox last month, “I truly believe medical decisions should be between a person and a doctor and that there should be no government involvement in this conversation at all. This is nobody’s business but between a woman and her doctor.” A two-time breast cancer survivor, Corkery was inspired to run for Congress after Hinson refused to co-sponsor a bipartisan bill on insurance coverage for breast cancer. Hinson also has been accused of spreading misinformation, falsely accusing Corkery to supporting near limitless abortion access.
IA-03: Nunn faces Democrat Lanon Baccam, a second-generation Tai Dam immigrant who grew up in Iowa solely after his refugee parents were relocated from Laos to Mount Pleasant in 1980. Both candidates are Drake University graduates and veterans who have served in Afghanistan. Baccam worked in Governor Tom Vilsack’s administration and for Vilsack in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Nunn has highlighted his work across the aisle, and expressed support for a bipartisan border security bill that Senate Republicans killed earlier this year. He was the only one of Iowa’s Republican members of Congress to accept the invitation to speak on the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox during the Iowa state fair.
Baccam has run advertising highlighting Nunn’s support for abortion bans, and has promised, “I will always protect the rights Iowa women had for generations. I will vote against a national abortion ban, vote to restore Roe v Wade, and support legislation guaranteeing the right to IVF and contraception.”
IA-04: Two term incumbent Feenstra faces Democrat Ryan Melton. This race is unusual because Feenstra’s conservative primary challenger Kevin Virgil has recently called on his supporters to back Melton. (Like Virgil, Melton opposes the use of eminent domain for a CO2 pipeline.) Melton solidly backs reproductive rights, while Feenstra has voted for abortion bans.
Melton has also criticized Feenstra for not requesting a single dollar in federal earmarks in the last four years. Iowa’s other Republican members of Congress have helped secure tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for various community projects: housing, workforce training, or infrastructure. Melton argues that Feenstra’s stance has contributed to the exodus of young people from small towns and rural areas, worsening economic stagnation across the district.
WHAT’S AT STAKE IN THE NOVEMBER 5 ELECTION
Your vote has consequences. Iowans will elect members of Congress, 50 state senators, and all 100 state representatives this November. Too many of our women and girls will lose wages, education, and professional aspirations, because our state government forced plans on them, and they lacked resources to travel out of state for reproductive health care. Remember, abortion bans in Iowa and elsewhere disproportionately burden women of color and those with limited economic resources.
Across the U.S., these are very dangerous times for pregnant women and girls, their families, abortion providers, and support systems (such as Planned Parenthood or abortion funds). Our collective voice is demanded to protect overwhelmed pregnant women, girls and reproductive health care workers.
Iowa’s near-total abortion ban is harmful and counterproductive, in my view. We need to elect leaders who support reproductive rights. By providing access to reproductive health care, we can give women and girls options and tools to advance their careers, such as trade school or a college education. The data show that it is in our state’s best economic interest to vote for candidates who oppose abortion bans. Reversing this policy would produce economic gains while empowering women and girls and treating them with dignity and respect.
Make your voting plans early, and research your picks, up and down the ballot.
Top photo originally published on U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson’s social media on July 17. From left: Iowa GOP co-chair Linda Upmeyer, U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Hinson, Governor Kim Reynolds, U.S. Representative Zach Nunn, U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra, Iowa GOP state chair Jeff Kaufmann.