Preborn Hearts Protection: As Iowa lawmakers continued working on a state constitutional amendment protecting unborn babies, Thomas More Society Special Counsel Martin Cannon testified before legislators.

The Life Amendment, also known as Senate Joint Resolution 9, passed by a state senate subcommittee on February 6, 2019, would make it clear that there is no right in the Iowa Constitution to abort unborn babies. The resolution would add language to the Iowa Constitution that reads: “The constitution does not secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”

The lawmakers’ primary objective is to supersede the Iowa Supreme Court’s recent ruling that there is a fundamental right to abortion contained in the Iowa Constitution, and to prevent activist judges from forcing state taxpayers to fund abortions.

Senate Joint Resolution 9 “does not outlaw abortion,” explained Cannon. “Unlike a Supreme Court ruling that largely takes the matter out of the hands of the people, this amendment does not say that abortion shall be allowed in Iowa or shall not be allowed in Iowa. It simply says that the question is not going to be answered and crammed down one side’s throat or the other’s by this constitution.”

The subcommittee’s passage of the Life Amendment marks the latest chapter in the battle between the people’s elected representatives and the abortion lobby. The resolution was introduced following last year’s Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling that a law requiring a 72-hour waiting period before having an abortion was unconstitutional.

Cannon, who has been defending the Iowa Heartbeat Bill on behalf of the state, explained that the bill was very narrowly drawn, affirming only that a beating heart signifies life in the particular child in question, and that the child must therefore be protected.

Throughout this battle for life, Cannon explained, "Abortion vendors and lobbyists have been claiming that these life-affirming laws cause them 'irreparable harm.' The true irreparable harm is what is being done to these babies – living persons with beating hearts.”