House tries new approach to abortion restrictions

DES MOINES – A House panel Monday approved a modified version of legislation intended to restrict access to abortions in Iowa.

The House Ways and Means Committee voted 14-8 with three absent to change the feticide section of the Iowa code that currently makes it a felony crime if a pregnancy is intentionally terminated with knowledge and voluntary consent after the end of the second trimester by changing the gestation period to 20 completed weeks and striking an exception to preserve the health of the mother. An exception for circumstances when a physician determines an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the mother would not be affected by the proposed House changes to Senate File 534.

The amended House version also would strike a reference to the viability of a fetus included in the current law which Rep. Dawn Pettengill, R-Mount Auburn, the bill's manager, said would remove physican discretion provided by the state's current feticide law. Pettengill said the proposed legislation, which would take effect upon enactment, was intended to tighten language governing circumstances whereby abortions legally can be performed in Iowa.

Pettengill said the bill was aimed at stopping Nebraska doctor LeRoy Carhart from opening a clinic in Council Bluffs, where he would perform late-term abortions. However, Republicans who hold a 60-40 majority in the House did not think a Senate-passed version that attempted to block the Carhart project using the state's certificate of need process would not be an effective way of prohibiting late-term abortions in Iowa.

However, Rep. Nate Willems, D-Lisbon, said the broadly worded House changes would go far beyond late-term abortions to deal with situations where problems might develop in the mid-term of a planned pregnancy, while Rep. Anesa Kajtazovic, D-Waterloo, called the House action “sad” because the proposed changes appeared to be motivated more by a desire to bring politics and government into private decisions of a woman, her family and physician.

“The amendment will really take us backward and it's disappointing to see that,” Kajtazovic said.

“I assure you that this is not about politics, it's about life,” Pettengill responded.

The Senate, on a 26-23 on a party-line verdict, voted last month to require that new medical facilities seeking to offer late-term abortions would have to be located in “close proximity” to the five hospitals in Iowa that are qualified neonatology centers. Since such centers are found only in Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Des Moines and Iowa City, backers of S.F. 534 said it would effectively halt Carhart from opening a clinic in Council Bluffs to provide late-term abortions.

The House, in late March, voted 60-39 to approve House File 657, which would have banned abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy – a version that Gov. Terry Branstad said he supported.

The full House is slated to take up the amended Senate version on Wednesday.