DES MOINES – The Iowa Senate, led by Republicans, has approved a ban on abortions after 20 weeks.
SF 471 passed the Iowa Senate 32-17. The act, “being deemed of immediate importance”, takes effect upon enactment. It will first have to pass in similar fashion in the Republican-controlled House and then get signed by Governor Terry Branstad.
The bill states that any person who intentionally terminates a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, after twenty weeks post fertilization, where death of the fetus results, commits feticide. Feticide is a class “C” felony. The new law strikes “the end of the second trimester of the pregnancy” and changes it to 20 weeks.
The bill adds that the law shall not apply to the termination of a human pregnancy between twenty and twenty-four weeks post fertilization performed by a physician, when in the best clinical judgment of the physician the human pregnancy has a fetal anomaly incompatible with life. The bill defines “fetal anomaly incompatible with life” to mean a fetal condition diagnosed in utero that, if the pregnancy results in a live birth, will with reasonable certainty result in the death of the child or will result in requiring the provision of life-sustaining procedures to the child after the child’s birth and for the duration of the child’s life.