On Dec. 28, 1846, when President James K. Polk signed the bill making Iowa the 29th state, its population was estimated at 96,000 people. Since then, Iowans’ ranks have grown
Bleeding Heartland
Sunday, Jun 27 2021
The Iowa Supreme Court will soon revisit one of the most politically charged questions of our time.
Last week a Johnson County District Court permanently blocked the state from “implementing, effectuating or enforcing” a law requiring a 24-hour waiting period before all abortions. Judge Mitchell Turner ruled the law unconstitutional on two grounds. The state is appealing the ruling and argues that a 2018 Iowa Supreme Court precedent, which established a fundamental right to an abortion under the Iowa Constitution, was “wrongly decided.”
Republican lawmakers planned for this scenario when they approved the waiting period during the waning hours of the 2020 legislative session. They may get their wish, but a reversal of the 2018 decision is not guaranteed.
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An estimated 26,000 marchers gathered in Des Moines on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017 for the worldwide Women’s March. Mei-Ling Shaw/Little Village
Republicans in the Iowa Senate approved an amendment to the Iowa Constitution that would undermine a woman’s right to an abortion on Tuesday. Senate Joint Resolution 2 passed on a party-line vote, with all Senate Republicans voting in favor and all the chamber’s Democrats voting against it.
“Everyone deserves the freedom to make medical decisions based on their own specific conditions and circumstances,” Sen. Amanda Ragan, a Democrat from Mason City, said during the debate on SJR 2 before the vote. “For the first time ever, the amendment would take away basic rights instead of protecting them.”
State court officials across the nation voted recently to rename the Family Justice Reform Initiative in memory of late Iowa Chief Justice Mark Cady.
Cady was “a champion of juvenile justice and family justice reform, Indiana Chief Justice Loretta Rush said in a news release announcing the name change.
The initiative’s work “imbues processes involving families with the decency and civility that Chief Justice Cady embodied, Alaska Chief Justice Joel Bolger, the current chair of the Cady Initiative for Family Justice Reform, said in the release.
The vote to rename the initiative to The Cady Initiative for Family Justice Reform occurred in February at a meeting of the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators.
DES MOINES The 2018 appointment of an Eastern Iowa district court judge by Gov. Kim Reynolds will stand, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday, ending a three-year controversy over whether Reynolds had missed the legal deadline for appointing the judge.