How debate lies and pledges would impact Iowans’ reproductive rights

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it paved the way for Iowa’s abortion ban, and bans across the country. If reproductive rights, like abortion protections, are restored, Iowa’s ban won’t be in effect anymore. VP Kamala Harris promised to sign those protections into law while Trump insisted everyone wanted Roe v. Wade overturned

Former-president Donald Trump, at the presidential debate hosted by ABC on Tuesday night, bragged again about overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, a decision which ended federal protections for abortion after almost 50 years.

“What I did is something—for 52 [sic] years, they’ve been trying to get Roe v Wade into the States and through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that,” Trump said.

Three of those justices—Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett—were appointed by Trump.

That decision, and a similar decision from the Iowa Supreme Court, paved the way for Iowa’s near-total abortion ban, which passed in 2023 and went into effect at the end of July.

On the other hand, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has traveled across the country—including in Iowa—since Roe was overturned to speak about reproductive rights, vowed to sign a law protecting abortion if it crossed her desk as President of the United States.

“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree: The government—and Donald Trump certainly—should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” she said.

Effect on Iowa

If reproductive rights are protected by a federal law, Iowa’s near-total abortion ban will no longer be enforceable.

Iowa’s law bans abortion before most people know they’re pregnant—when electrical pulses are detected in an embryo. Anti-abortion lawmakers and activists falsely call this a “fetal heartbeat” and it can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

Though the ban has exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, bans in other states have shown that exceptions don’t work. The Iowa Board of Medicine’s rules for following the law are vague enough, meaning doctors aren’t even sure when they’d be allowed to act.

If Trump is elected, Harris said, Project 2025, the conservative game-plan written by former-Trump staffers for a second Trump term, has provisions that would ban abortion nationwide, including abortion medication, and set up a government agency to monitor American’s pregnancies. In this case, Iowa’s ban would remain permanent, and the options people still rely on would be harder to get.

“I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body, should not be made by the government,” Harris said, after vowing again to sign a bill to, at least, protect abortion until around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Trump Lies

Trump said multiple times that the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade meant voters in every state would be able to decide what they wanted.

“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,” he said.

Despite 61% of Iowans supporting abortion access, Iowa voters can’t petition for abortion rights to be added to the Iowa Constitution.

Constitutional amendments have to pass the legislature twice before they can be added to the ballot for voters to weigh in, and the Republican-dominated legislature won’t pass an abortion-rights amendment.

“You want to talk about this is what people wanted?” Harris said. “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot: She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term, they don’t want that.”

Harris also corrected Trump’s lies about Democrats supporting abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy and executing newborns.

“Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” she said. “That is not happening. It’s insulting to the women of America.”