Iowans are Pro-Life

In 2008 the Abortion Party dominated national and state politics. Barack Obama was the newly elected president and his party controlled Congress. Chet Culver was in his second year as Iowa governor after trouncing the Pro-Life Party’s candidate by ten votes. His party controlled the Iowa Senate 32 to 18 and the House by 56 to 44.

Fifteen years hence, the tables have turned. What happened?

Recent history

In 2017, the Iowa Pro-Life Party passed a 20 week abortion ban, the point at which the unborn person can feel the pain inflicted on her by abortion.

The next year, 2018, they passed an abortion ban at the point at which a human heartbeat is detectable, which occurs as early as six weeks following fertilization.

That same year, the Iowa Supreme Court found a ‘fundamental right to abortion’ mysteriously embedded somewhere in the Iowa Constitution by Iowa’s founding fathers, a decision they corrected four years later.

Nonetheless, an injunction remained which prevented the Heartbeat Bill from  being enforced. Even though Roe v Wade was overturned, the Iowa Supreme court refused to lift the injunction in 2023, asserting that the bill needs to be passed again.

So Governor Kim Reynolds called a special session last week and the Heartbeat Bill was once again passed, and another injunction was immediately slapped on it. We must wait another year before we hear if the Iowa Supreme Court will at long last allow the Heartbeat Bill to be enforced.

The pro-life party takes charge

The Pro-Life party remains on offense in Iowa, and Iowa voters keep voting for them in bigger numbers.

Again, it’s worth asking: what happened?

Remember, the Pro-Life Party had but 18 members in the Iowa Senate in 2008. But that number today stands at 34. They have controlled the Senate for seven years.

Remember, the Pro-Life Party had but 44 members in the Iowa House in 2008. But that number today stands at 64. They have controlled the House now for eleven years running.

And remember, the Iowa Pro-Life Party has held pretty much the same views on abortion the past fifteen years. Not so with the Abortion Party. Barack Obama shifted his party radically on the issue of abortion.

The Obama effect

Just two decades ago, at the federal level, both parties voted unanimously for the 2002 Born Alive Infants Protection Act. 

But in Illinois, then state senator Obama opposed this type of law. With his ascension to the presidency, he guided his party on a path that refused to consider any regulation on human abortion at state or federal levels.

Consider …

A significant number of the Abortion Party (63 members of the House and 17 Senators) joined members of the Pro-Life Party in voting for a federal ban on partial-birth abortion in 2003.

In 2005, 54 House members of the Abortion Party voted in favor of the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which made it illegal for a non-parent to transport a minor across a state line for an abortion.

Today, with virtual unanimity, the Abortion Party opposes any such restrictions, a significant departure from the party’s conflicted views on the issue prior to the Obama presidency.

Today, the Biden/Harris administration has carried Obama’s radicalization of abortion to its natural conclusion,  calling for ‘codifying’ abortion at the federal level.

Perhaps that’s why the Pro-Life Party has gained such traction in Iowa since the Obama presidency began. Iowans don’t like being pushed around by abortion extremists in Washington telling them how they should think on this life or death issue.

The Abortion Party loses control of the states

Other states feel the same. 

Under Obama, the Abortion Party suffered their biggest losses in state legislatures in a century, losing 948 seats in all. The Pro-Life Party had more seats in 83 out of 99 state legislative chambers in 2016 than they did in 2008, reflecting a reaction against extremist top-down abortion policies.

Before Obama, the Abortion Party believed abortion should be “safe, legal … but rare.” 

Post-Obama, the party considers abortion to be ‘healthcare’; a fundamental human right; that taxpayers should fund it; and that Catholic doctors and nurses, and hospitals perform them even if it violates their conscience. All of this should be mandated at the federal level, regardless of the political sentiments of the individual states.

They are out-of-step

The Abortion Part is out of step with more than Iowa voters. Seven out of ten voters who identify as members of the Abortion Party believe abortion should be regulated, in sharp contrast to their party leaders who no longer consider any regulation on abortion permissible.

Like voters in other states, Iowans don’t agree on every single aspect of the abortion debate. But in light of their growing majorities in the legislature and their landslide re-election of a pro-life governor, Kim Reynolds, it’s safe to say that Iowans are pro-life.

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