At debate, Trump falsely said voters decide on abortion. Not in Iowa

At the debate, Trump suggested the overturn of Roe v. Wade has allowed voters to decide on abortion in their states. Instead, many Republican-led states have tried to block voters from voting on ballot measures to protect abortion access.

Former president Donald Trump, at the presidential debate hosted by ABC on Tuesday night, said that voters are now getting the chance to decide whether abortion should be legal, and said people don’t want it to be protected at the federal level.

That isn’t true.

“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote. And that’s what happened,” Trump said at the debate.

“Each individual state is voting. It’s the vote of the people now. It’s not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it,” he said later.

And yet, Republican-controlled states have fought tooth and nail to keep voters from having a say on abortion. If voters even get the chance.

In Iowa, amendments to the constitution have to be proposed by the legislature. Before a proposed amendment ever makes it to the ballot for voters to decide on, it has to pass through the legislature twice.

According to the most recent polling, 61% of Iowans want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, but the Republican-dominated Iowa Legislature will likely never hold a vote on an amendment to make abortion legal now that Iowa’s abortion ban is in effect.

But they used to be open to letting the voters decide—when the ballot measure would’ve been about outlawing abortion. As recently as 2021, before Roe v. Wade was overturned, Iowa Republican lawmakers passed a constitutional amendment that would have stated that the Iowa constitution doesn’t secure a right to an abortion. 

It takes multiple years of passing an amendment through the Legislature before it goes before the voters, but Republicans dropped their effort after the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision.

With Roe gone and the Iowa Supreme Court stating there is no right to abortion in the Iowa Constitution, Gov. Kim Reynolds, an anti-abortion Republican called a special session to ban abortion. In one day, the near-total abortion ban went through subcommittee and committee hearings in the Iowa House and Senate. Both chambers debated, and passed the law in the early hours of the morning. 

Three days after it was signed, a judge blocked it because of the people who would be harmed while the lawsuit challenging the ban proceeded. Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird, an anti-abortion Republican, challenged the block and in June 2024, the Iowa Supreme Court got rid of it and decided that abortion bans should be harder to challenge in court. 

Other States

On Monday, the Missouri Secretary of State, Republican Jay Ashcroft, removed the ballot measure that would give voters the chance to make abortion legal in the state.

On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Ashcroft to put it back on.

In August, when Ashcroft put the measure onto the ballot, he used misleading language to explain what the ballot measure would do and suggested it would make it harder to protect pregnant people’s health. When organizers sued, a Missouri judge had to correct him then, too.

A similar fight about technicalities is playing out in Nebraska. The Nebraska Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about whether to allow an abortion-rights amendment on November ballots.On Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled the abortion-rights amendment can remain on the ballot.

Ohio’s Republican secretary of state also tried to put loaded language on the ballot, and before the election the Republican-majority legislature tried to make it harder to amend the state’s constitution. They triggered a special election asking voters if amendments should require 60% of the vote rather than a simple majority.

In Arkansas, Republican leaders forced the amendment off of the ballot over an argument about paperwork.

Florida also has a ballot measure to restore access to abortion in the state. Voters who have signed petitions supporting the amendment have been visited and questioned by state law enforcement officers because Florida Republicans are claiming fraud. An agency in the Florida government has also created a website filled with lies about the ballot measure putting women’s health in danger.

Trump, a Florida resident, has announced he will vote against expanding abortion access in Florida because of a lie about abortions happening at the ninth month of pregnancy and people supporting executing babies after they’ve been born.

*UPDATE Friday Sept. 13, 12:30 p.m: Added the updated information about the Nebraska amendment.