Does the Iowa State Legislature prize Iowans' liberties?
Imagine having fewer rights to autonomy over your living body than you do to your corpse or your garbage left out for collection.
The Iowa Legislature will be considering a bill to ban abortion at 6 weeks tomorrow. There are protests planned at the Capitol; you can get the details by clicking here. There will also be a hearing. If you want to comment at the hearing or leave a written public comment, you can do that here (make sure to click the “CON” radio button to indicate your opposition).
I submitted the following comment:
I prize my liberty.
Chief Justice Cady understood liberty.
"Autonomy and dominion over one’s body go to the very heart of what it means to be free. At stake in this case is the right to shape, for oneself, without unwarranted governmental intrusion, one’s own identity, destiny, and place in the world. Nothing could be more fundamental to the notion of liberty." Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v. Reynolds ex rel. State, 915 N.W.2d 206 (Iowa 2018).
Nothing. There is nothing in the world that is more fundamental to liberty than bodily autonomy and dominion over one's body. We recognize this when we recognize the right of a person not to be touched without permission (Iowa Code §708.1(2)(a)). We recognize this when we recognize the right of a person not to be confined against their will (Iowa Code §710.1). We recognize this when we recognize the right of a person to decide what will happen to their corpse--even if that corpse's organs could be used to keep another person alive (Iowa Code §142C.3(4)(d)).
What the Iowa Legislature proposes at present is to take away the right of half of all Iowans to dominion and autonomy over our bodies.
If this bill passes, we will not be able to decide not to be touched for 40 weeks. People already, for some reason, feel free to touch pregnant bellies any time they want to. This bill goes farther: it may instate a legal requirement to subject oneself to a medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound in order to get medical care. In any other circumstance, vaginal penetration of a person who does not want to be penetrated would be called what it is: rape. I invite any supporter of this bill who has not had a transvaginal ultrasound to try it out and see if, after the experience, you believe this is not a problem. If you do not have a vagina, other avenues are available.
I have three children, so I know how much touching is involved in pregnancy care: probing and pushing, measuring everything, vaginal exams, IVs, vaccinations and blood draws, monitors strapped to the belly, catheters, needles in the spine. Some of these "touches" are painful, some are dangerous (to say nothing of the birthing process itself). Imagine every single one of those touches and prods and needles being unwanted but unavoidable. And those are just the unwanted touch elements--there are many, many other indignities of pregnancy that no person should be forced to endure against their will. Not one.
If this bill passes, we will not be able to decide to avoid the confinement of pregnancy for 40 weeks. I have endured early labor, Braxton-Hicks contractions, bed rest, muscle cramps so severe that I could not walk, the ungainliness of a pregnant body, the inability to tie my own shoes. I have affirmatively decided to accept this confinement each time I went through it, and my pregnancies were relatively easy. Imagine every indignity, every physical limitation, every severe pain, every lifelong effect of pregnancy being unwanted and unavoidable.
If this bill passes, we will not be able to decide whether or not our organs will be used to support another life. We will have fewer rights than a corpse. Imagine having fewer rights to bodily autonomy and dominion over one's body than a corpse.
Imagine, as Justice Waterman wrote, believing "that trash set out in a garbage can for collection is entitled to more … protection than a woman’s interest in autonomy and dominion over her own body." Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Reynolds ex rel. State, No. 22-2036 (Iowa 2023).
I prize my liberty. The question Tuesday is, does the state legislature of Iowa prize our liberty, or does it want to give Iowans fewer rights to our own bodies than to a corpse or garbage left for collection?
Kelcey Patrick-Ferree lives in Iowa.
Like you, I am a mother by choice. And I am a mother FOR CHOICE. The so-called "fetal heartbeat bill" is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment. Doctors and scientists have told us time and again that the pulse detected at approximately six weeks from the time a sperm enters the egg is not a heart. It is nothing more than a pulse. It is pumping nothing nowhere as it has nothing to pump and no vessels to pump toward or into. So to call this bill the heartbeat bill is a lie and a manipulation. What's more, fewer than 25% of fertilized embryos ever develop. Most are naturally expelled from a woman's body during the menstrual cycle. The very wisdom of the body knows this is not a baby. This bill has nothing to do with protecting life; its sole purpose is to control women.
Those who support this legislation would for the most part say they are saving the life of a baby and that outweighs in their minds any indignities or difficulties a woman might suffer. We talk past each other. We say mothers will suffer. They say babies will die. Is it too complex to address the issue of "personhood" and the impossibility of determining those parameters indisputably? As Shirley said, fewer than 25% of fertilized embryos ever develop. I get the feeling when I point that out that it doesn't even register with anti-choice people. It's as if they don't even hear the words. We should have pounced on all the "heartbeat" bill rhetoric when it started, repeating loudly and often that there can't be a heartbeat because there isn't a heart. We should have pushed back when the focus was on late term abortions, pointing out that late term abortions were always complicated, often dangerous, and almost always with parents who had been looking forward to their baby. Those concepts have taken root deeply in their brains by now to support their anti-choice position. Much harder to dig out. I keep wondering if aggressively taking on the legal definition of personhood might be worth doing. I certainly feel we're on firm ground arguing it can't be before a brain has developed that is capable of thought. It would allow us to agree with the other side that all people deserve protection, just not all potential people.