After years of fighting Iowa’s strict abortion law, clinics also prepared to follow it

AMES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa’s law banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy goes into effect Monday, a drastic change that enrages — but doesn’t surprise — Sarah Traxler.

When Traxler, an OB-GYN based in Minnesota and the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood North Central States, went to high school in a conservative Louisiana town in the 1990s, she saw abortion rights losing ground even then, decades before the U.S. Supreme Court and Iowa’s high court would say there isn’t a constitutional right to abortion.

“The protections of Roe have just been chipped away at slowly through time,” she told The Associated Press.

At 8 a.m. Monday in Iowa, the state will join more than a dozen others where abortion access has been sharply curbed in the roughly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

It’s an outcome Iowa’s abortion providers have been fighting but still prepared for, shoring up abortion access in neighboring states and drawing on the lessons learned where bans went into effect more swiftly.

States with restrictive laws are “glimpses of our future,” Traxler said. Even with the ability to prepare, she told reporters Friday, “this transition is devastating and tragic for the people of Iowa.”

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