The Coalition of Pro-Life Leaders, a united group of nine pro-life organizations active in Iowa – publicly celebrates and commends the Iowa Legislature for today’s passage of HJR5, formerly known as the Protect Life Amendment, now officially titled the Life Amendment to the Iowa State Constitution.
“Today marks the first step in restoring the proper voice of the people of Iowa,” says Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of The FAMiLY Leader, a Coalition member. “In 2018, five radical, unelected judges stripped that voice away, declaring that they and they alone get to set Iowa’s abortion laws. Without constitutional grounds or any input of the people, they invented a so-called ‘right’ to abortion and then paved the way for future courts to force late-term abortion and taxpayer-funded abortion on Iowa.
“But the vast majority of Iowans don’t want to fund elective abortions nor live in a state where a baby’s life can be snuffed out just moments before her first breath,” Vander Plaats continues. “The judges were wrong to silence Iowa voters and seize for themselves the power to rewrite the people’s constitution. Today, the Iowa Legislature was right to give Iowans our voice back.”
“The Life Amendment represents everyday Iowans telling unelected judges, ‘You don’t get to just decide the abortion debate for us,'” added Maggie DeWitte, executive director of Iowans for LIFE and spokeswoman for the Coalition of Pro-Life Leaders. “‘Because there’s one argument in the debate you didn’t take into account, one truth you can’t argue away: That little girl in her mother’s womb, she’s a baby.'”
The Life Amendment does not require the governor’s signature to advance. To be added to the Iowa Constitution, however, it must pass the next General Assembly of the Iowa Legislature (in 2023 or 2024) and then be ratified by a vote of the people of Iowa.
