Iowa abortion bill not unconstitutional

Government officials in the United States pledge to uphold the Constitution as written. These oaths affirm that the rule of law is superior to the rule of any person or group.

This principle requires that each branch of government act only within its stated constitutional authority. The courts may have power to rule that a law is unconstitutional and void. But courts do not have authority to substitute a new law for the old.

Several Iowa legislators plan to introduce a bill that will ban abortion after 20 weeks except where the mother's life is in jeopardy. Abortion advocates claim this would be unconstitutional because it departs from the viability rule - the point when states can ban abortion - set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973).

When the Supreme Court ruled that the Texas abortion statute was unconstitutional, it should have stopped right there. But the Court went on to legislate a new trimester system of rules for the whole nation to follow. The Court did not have constitutional authority to substitute these rules as new law. It should have been left to each state's legislature.

In his Roe dissent, Justice White wrote that the Court had “constitutionally disentitled” the people and the legislatures of the states from their right to weigh and balance the relative rights of the fetus and the mother.

The Court's rules are void and do not stand in the way of the abortion law proposed for Iowa.

John Hesling, J.D.

Oskaloosa