Iowa Republican bill would classify all abortions as homicide

Legislators have been happy to prosecute abortion providers in the past. But their new move is to target Iowans who get abortions themselves, classifying the procedure as a homicide. 

Iowa Republicans have been pushing for years to make abortions less accessible to Iowans and criminalize their healthcare providers. This session, however, Republicans are pushing legislation they used to draw the line at.

This week, Iowa Republican Sen. Jason Schultz’s Senate Study Bill 3115 advanced out of a subcommittee. The bill requires in-person doctor visits to obtain abortion pills and ban telehealth providers from issuing abortion pills by mail. 

Telehealth appointments make up between 60% and 65% of all abortions in Iowa, according to a KFF analysis of the Society of Family Planning #WeCount Public Report. Iowa has already seen a significant drop in the number of clinician-provided abortions following the state’s near-total abortion ban. 

The bill further requires physicians to read notification language that medication abortions can be reversed via  so-called “abortion reversal” procedures—a mythical treatment the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists says is not supported by science. Far-right causes across the country nonetheless continue to push misinformation about abortion reversal while opposing abortion pills in the first place. 

Another bill, House File 2316, would classify any form of abortion as a homicide. The bill is sponsored by Reps. Zach Dieken, Samantha Fett, Mark Cisneros, John Wills, Wendy Larson, Charley Thomson, Dean Fisher, and Craig Johnson. It redefines “person” under Iowa’s homicide and assault law to include fertilized eggs.

The bill does not include exceptions for rape or incest. It does exempt miscarriages and procedures performed to save the life of the mother. But the medical and legal community has pointed out that these laws require doctors to determine whether the patient’s case qualifies for an exception. And in some cases, this “gray area” has led to pregnant women not getting life saving care. 

Last year, Jess Djukanovic, a Des Moines mother of four and former Team USA wrestler, was diagnosed with a fatal fetal anomaly at 11 weeks that caused fluid to pool around her heart and lungs. When her husband rushed her to a Des Moines ER, her doctor told her there was nothing she could do. The doctor, Djukanovic said, was concerned about felony charges for physicians who violate Iowa’s near-total abortion ban. 

She said, “I don’t want to die because of politics.” 

Dr. Jack Resneck, Jr., a former American Medical Association president, wrote that physicians are “caught between good medicine and bad law.”

A brief history of Iowa restricting abortions

Neither the House or Senate bills emerged out of a vacuum. Restricting reproductive rights and medical practice has been a theme among legislators for years as they’ve dramatically shifted the legal landscape.

Back in 2013, then-Gov. Terry Branstad replaced members of the Iowa Board of Medicine in an attempt to ban the use of telemedicine to access abortions. A judge ruled that this created undue burden for patients who do not have ready access to a doctor. The policy did not survive, but the strategy of regulatory appointments and administrative pressure to chip away at access became a template. 

In 2017, the Iowa Legislature passed a bill that required Iowans seeking an abortion to wait 72 hours after their initial appointment. In 2018, the Iowa Supreme Court struck down the law and ruled that Iowans have a fundamental right to abortion under the Iowa Constitution. 

The same year, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill into law that banned most abortions around six weeks of pregnancy. It was similarly blocked by the courts.

Iowa Republicans changed the law in 2020 to require a 24-hour waiting period for people seeking an abortion, requiring two separate appointments. It got delayed by the courts, but went into effect in 2022. 

That same year, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 

In 2023, Reynolds called a special Legislative session for the purpose of passing the second version of her six-week abortion ban. The Iowa Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2024 and it went into effect that July. 

With the ban entrenched, in-person abortion access is at a historic low. Much of the state lacks ready access to OBGYN care. Now, Republicans are opening a new front in that decades-long campaign: going after the pills and the patients themselves.