Yesterday the Iowa Senate Ways and Means Committee advanced a bill that would restrict where abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy can be performed in Iowa. The bill is aimed at stopping Dr. Leroy Carhart from opening a new clinic in Council Bluffs without adding new restrictions on a woman’s right to have a late-term abortion. However, Republican leaders in both chambers of the state legislature spoke out against that approach yesterday. Details and next steps in this controversy are after the jump.
UPDATE: Added comments from anti-choice Democratic State Senator Tom Hancock below.
Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Joe Bolkcom introduced Senate Study Bill 1212 this week. It defines a “specialized outpatient surgical facility” as “a freestanding facility, not including a hospital, in which surgical abortion procedures are performed after the fetus has attained a postfertilization age of twenty weeks or more.” Using the state’s “certificate of need” process, the bill requires such facilities to be “located in close proximity” to a hospital that provides an appropriate level of care for the woman or fetus. Bolkom said his bill “protects the life and health of the mother and the fetus. What it doesn’t do is put politicians or the government in the middle of a family’s gut-wrenching decision about what to do when a planned pregnancy goes terribly wrong.”
A Ways and Means subcommittee approved the bill, and shortly thereafter it passed the full committee on a straight party-line vote of 9 to 6. But when Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal attempted to bring the legislation (now called Senate File 534 after committee passage) to the Senate floor last night, Republican State Senator Kent Sorenson refused to give “unanimous consent”. It is scheduled to be debated on Monday, May 16.
I expect all 24 Senate Republicans to vote against this bill. Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley blasted the proposal yesterday, saying it “would do nothing to prevent Iowa from becoming the late-term abortion Mecca of the Midwest.”
McKinley said didn’t specifically mention Gronstal’s name but he told reporters today that Bolkcom’s bill is “doing nothing but giving cover” to avoid a controversy. He said he would allow people to draw their own conclusions whom the bill was aimed at protecting. Gronstal has been under pressure from some Council Bluffs residents to prevent Carhart from establishing a Council Bluffs clinic.
[…] McKinley said that proposal would still allow Carhart to establish abortion clinics in Des Moines, Davenport, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.
IowaPolitics.com got Bolkcom’s reaction:
Bolkcom confirmed that that’s true. However, he pointed out that six abortions after 20 weeks were performed in 2009, and most of them were done in his hometown of Iowa City where the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is located. That means there’s not a demand for freestanding clinics to perform such procedures, he said.
If Senate Republicans are united against Senate File 534, all 26 Democrats in the chamber would have to vote yes in order to pass the bill. Several Democratic senators oppose legal abortion rights. Two of those, Joe Seng and Tom Hancock, have signed a “discharge petition” to bring a broader ban on abortions after 20 weeks gestation out of Senate committee. Seng serves on Ways and Means and voted for Senate Study Bill 1212 in committee yesterday. I am seeking comment from Hancock on whether Bolkcom’s approach is acceptable to him, or whether he agrees with Republicans who say it doesn’t do enough to restrict late-term abortions.
Even if the Senate approves this bill next week, House Speaker Kraig Paulsen indicated yesterday that it will go nowhere in the Republican-controlled House: “If, in fact, all it does is formalize a procedure for doctors to come to the state of Iowa including Dr. Carhart and perform late-term abortions, I am confident the House will not pass a bill that does that.”
Paulsen has no choice but to take a hard line on late-term abortions after most of the Republican caucus, including all the House leadership, torpedoed efforts this week to vote on a “personhood” bill.
Meanwhile, Republican State Senator David Johnson attempted to force a full Senate vote on a 20-week abortion ban yesterday. While the Senate was debating the health and human services budget for fiscal year 2012, Johnson offered an amendment “that would change the definition of ‘feticide’ from 24 weeks of pregnancy, to 20 weeks.” Senate President Jack Kibbie ruled the amendment out of order because it was not germane to the bill at hand.
It’s still not clear whether the Senate will debate House File 657, the 20-week abortion ban approved by the Iowa House. Bolkcom is floor-managing that bill in the Senate. Earlier this week he told me he hadn’t yet decided whether to bring it to the floor. It had been stuck in committee until supporters collected 26 signatures on the discharge petition. Bolkcom said Democrats are working on amendments to make the bill constitutional. Republican Senator Johnson had previously suggested amendments to remove language stating that “life begins at fertilization” and to better protect the health of pregnant mothers.
Share any relevant thoughts in this thread. Across the Missouri River, Nebraska state legislators are seeking to ban “telemedicine abortions” from being offered in that state. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (which covers Iowa and Nebraska) offers that service at some of its Iowa clinics. The organization’s latest project in Nebraska will consolidate two clinics in Lincoln to build a “large, modern, beautiful state-of-the-art” health center.
UPDATE: Asked whether he planned to vote for Bolkcom’s bill on the Senate floor, Senator Hancock told me on May 13, “If it keeps an abortion clinic out of Iowa, I will vote for it.” When I mentioned Republican claims that the bill would allow a clinic providing late-term abortions to open in Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City or Des Moines, Hancock said he “asked that very question” when Senate Democrats discussed this bill. He was told the bill “will be narrowed” so that no one could get a certificate of need to open such a clinic anywhere in Iowa.