Iowa
Why IVF advocates worry Iowa could become the next Alabama over ‘personhood’ legislation
IVF treatments after Roe: What does it mean for IVF treatments?
New bans on abortion have raised concerns over the future of fertility treatments like IVF. A reproductive lawyer weighs in on the implications.
Michelle Hanks, USA TODAY
Karen Mathes says she owes “her whole being” to in vitro fertilization.
Seventeen years ago, the 41-year-old Polk City resident and her husband began IVF to start a family. An eating disorder in college meant Mathes had a suppressed ovulation cycle, prompting the couple to seek out fertility treatment at Mid-Iowa Fertility in Des Moines.
After two rounds of treatment, Mathes and her husband welcomed three children: a daughter in 2009 and twin sons in 2012.
“I owe my whole being to Dr. (Brian) Cooper and Mid-Iowa Fertility. If they weren’t there, there was no way that I would have the family that I have,” Mathes, who is now a nurse at Mid-Iowa Fertility, told the Des Moines Register.
“I’m not really sure of how many other jobs where you can help create life and help people basically reach their dreams of being parents,” she said. “I don’t really know of anything else out there that could really satisfy me as much as finding the first heartbeat for somebody’s first child after they’ve been struggling for 5 or 10 years.”
But recent court rulings and legislation are raising fears that IVF treatments may be in jeopardy.
Shock waves swept through the industry, and throughout the rest of the country, recently after the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through IVF should be legally considered children. Hospitals and fertility clinics paused treatments in the days that followed.
Last week, Alabama state lawmakers gave final approval to legislation to protect IVF providers and patients from criminal and civil liability. The bill has yet to be signed into law by Alabama’s governor.
The Alabama ruling has no direct impact in Iowa, but it has opened the door to questions about the possible impacts to IVF care in Iowa from providers like Mathes and Cooper, the physician at Mid-Iowa Fertility.
In particular, providers and advocates worry about the potential legal ramifications of existing Iowa law defining “unborn child” and from new legislation state lawmakers are considering that furthers the effort to define fertilized embryos as “personhood.”
“We’re tampering in ground that is difficult for science to define, which makes it exceedingly more difficult for politicians to define,” Cooper said.
Existing Iowa law defines fertilized embryo as ‘unborn person’
Iowa Code Chapters 146A and 146B define “unborn child” as an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization to live birth.
That language was established in Iowa as part of the law that passed in 2017 establishing Iowa’s current 20-week abortion ban. Under that provision, the language applies only to doctors performing abortions in Iowa.
While this existing law doesn’t directly pertain to regulation of fertility care, its language has the potential to cause ramifications in Iowa similar to those that played out in Alabama, according to legal and medical experts interviewed by the Register.
Alan Ostergren, president of the Kirkland Institute and a prominent conservative attorney, said plaintiffs in a lawsuit could use that language to argue any loss of embryos is not destruction of property, but instead a wrongful death.
As in Alabama, that distinction would be up to Iowa’s courts to decide. So far, no lawsuit has set that kind of precedent, Ostergren said.
“Whether their damages would be for the destruction of their property or would have been a wrongful death claim, those plaintiffs would have to persuade the Iowa Supreme Court that the law should recognize that embryo as a child and not just an embryo,” Ostergren said. “There’s not a code section right now that would directly answer that question.”
Legislation Iowa lawmakers are considering this session, House File 2575, uses the same language as existing law. The bill, which was approved by the Iowa House on Thursday, would create stricter penalties for terminating a person’s pregnancy without their consent. That bill is awaiting a Senate vote.
Another bill, House File 2518, uses the same “unborn person” definition to allow Iowans to bring wrongful death lawsuits over “wrongful death of an unborn child,” which would include a fertilized embryo.
Republican lawmakers are trying to tamp down fears that the same thing that happened in Alabama awaits Iowa.
“These bills were not crafted with the intention of having any effect on IVF, and they don’t make any changes to IVF in Iowa,” Melissa Saitz, a spokesperson for Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley, said in a statement. “The Alabama Supreme Court has no effect on Iowa law. As always, the speaker will continue to seek feedback from Iowans on any legislative changes they would like made on this topic in the future.”
More: House votes to raise penalty for killing an ‘unborn person.’ Democrats say it endangers IVF
What are the implications for IVF treatment?
To Cooper, the physician at Mid-Iowa Fertility, the personhood statute does not mean IVF treatments could not take place in Iowa.
However, he said it would pose huge ramifications for key pieces of that care, including genetic testing and disposing of leftover embryos.
“I think we would still be able to do some treatment, but it can significantly limit what we’re able to do and take some of our most useful tools away,” he said.
If fertilized embryos are defined as persons, Cooper said, it’s unclear whether providers would be allowed to discard or donate frozen embryos that patients don’t want to use.
To fertility care providers, perhaps the most concerning aspect are the implications for genetic testing, which clinics rely on to detect abnormalities and otherwise ensure patients are receiving healthy embryos that are more likely to result in a healthy birth.
In some cases, patients who aren’t struggling to get pregnant seek out IVF treatment to ensure implanted embryos don’t inherit severe genetic conditions, such as Huntington’s disease. Through this method, Cooper said IVF providers have the opportunity to “virtually eliminate” deadly conditions in children.
“Who doesn’t see the positivity in that? But if you define that personhood begins at conception and I have an embryo affected, you’re telling me I’ve got to put that back? That’s where the quagmire comes in,” Cooper said.
What do supporters, critics say about the ‘personhood’ debate?
Iowa’s effort aligns with a longtime campaign nationwide by anti-abortion advocates for governments to define “fetal personhood,” therefore recognizing a fetus as a person and grant them the rights and protections guaranteed to people.
Republican lawmakers dismissed concerns that the bill approved by the Iowa House would have ramifications similar to those playing out in Alabama, stating during last week’s debate that existing Iowa law has not had any effect.
More: Iowa’s GOP Congress members say they’re both ‘pro-life’ and pro-IVF after Alabama ruling
Still, Democrats and other advocates have raised alarms about this effort, particularly since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which opened the door for states, including Iowa, to establish strict abortion laws.
Mazie Stilwell, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Advocates for Iowa, said the proposed legislation is a “blatant attempt” to further conservative advocates’ anti-abortion agenda in the state. She argued that additional personhood language in Iowa law has the potential to create chaos within the legal system.
“The GOP has power to take away people’s control over their bodies and their lives and, unfortunately, access to IVF is no different,” Stilwell said.
Ostergren argued that the overturning of Roe v. Wade opened the door for legislative scrutiny of certain medical practices, including IVF and surrogacy.
“People have made a mistake if they think that they can just start fertilizing and then freezing embryos in a lab and run a business doing that and have no legal, ethical or moral scrutiny of what they’re doing,” Ostergren said.
Cooper pushed back on that argument, saying IVF treatment and other fertility care is one of the most regulated fields in medicine. He also said the industry has guidelines from multiple medical regulatory bodies to ensure providers are delivering the most ethical care possible.
“They really need to understand what’s already happening before you come in from the outside and try to impose something else, especially when you’re not intimately familiar with what happens in our world,” Cooper said. “You just end up restricting care and taking useful science away from patients that can really benefit from it.”
Mathes disagrees with the push to define fertilized embryos as people, saying that she views those embryos more as “a potential for life.” Without numerous medical interventions and support, many of those don’t grow beyond a bundle of cells.
Even then, she said, there isn’t a guarantee a healthy birth will result.
“It scares me,” she said, “It’s not so black and white. There’s a lot of gray area in the middle. It affects a lot of people, and they don’t understand that. Unless you work in it every day, you would never understand it.”
Reporter Stephen Gruber-Miller contributed to this report.
Michaela Ramm covers health care for the Des Moines Register. She can be reached at mramm@registermedia.com, at (319) 339-7354 or on Twitter at @Michaela_Ramm
Gov. Kim Reynolds proposes classroom cellphone ban for Iowa schools
Reynolds is proposing legislation for school boards to ban Iowa’s K-12 students from using cellphones during class with exemptions for emergencies.
Iowa saw a slight drop in traffic fatalities last year, but the Iowa State Patrol, bicycling advocates and lawmakers hope to reduce those numbers significantly in 2025 by passing a bill that would ban electronic devices while driving.
There were 354 deaths on Iowa’s roads in 2024, down from 378 the year before, according to data from the Iowa Department of Transportation. Yet that number is too high, officials say, as they make a renewed push this legislative session for lawmakers to pass what’s known as a hands-free bill, something Gov. Kim Reynolds called for in her Condition of State address last week.
“That’s 354 fatalities too many,” Iowa State Patrol spokesperson Sgt. Alex Dinkla told the Register. “We don’t want to continue seeing fatalities happen in our roadways. We’re out here working the road and making sure our roadways are safe each and every day.”
It’s already illegal while driving in Iowa to use a cellphone “to write, send or view an electronic message,” like a text message. But a bill introduced in the Senate last week would fully ban drivers from using electronic devices like cellphones, except in voice activated or hands-free mode.
Beyond distracted driving, the Iowa State Patrol says drivers and passengers failing to wear seatbelts contributed to 43% of last year’s fatalities. One the Iowa State Patrol’s goals this year is to look at each of the 354 deaths to find any correlations, Dinkla said.
“We want to find out why these are happening or if there are certain areas where these fatalities are happening the most,” Dinkla said.
In November 2023, the Iowa State Patrol worked with the Iowa Department of Transportation to implement six traffic safety corridors across the state, Dinkla said. The six areas were marked in the top 1% for all of Iowa crashes from 2016-2020.
The safety corridors have signs that indicate that there is an increased law enforcement presence for the next 20 miles. Data shows there has been a reduction in crashes in the safety corridors, Dinkla said, and the Iowa State Patrol could implement more in the future.
Iowans support hands-free law, Iowa State Patrol finds
Looking forward to the Iowa legislative session, authorities are again asking lawmakers to pass a bill that would ban distracted driving. Drivers who use hand-held devices while driving are four times more likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves or others, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation.
“We’ve been working on trying to legislate and educate the public on the dangers of distracted driving,” Dinkla said. “We know that it’s a device that is causing crashes and it’s leading to crashes.”
Iowa authorities have been looking at other states that have passed hands-free bills, such as Minnesota and Illinois, who Dinkla said saw reductions in crashes after their laws went into effect.
The Iowa State Patrol conducted a survey at the Iowa State Fair and found that 85% of respondents were in support of hands-free driving, Dinkla said.
“The more we wait to not make Iowa a hands-free state, we’re going to continue to see fatalities rise from people driving in an inappropriate and inexcusable manner,” he said.
Reynolds said in her speech she supports hands-free driving legislation that would ban distracted driving. Legislation has previously passed in the Senate but stalled in the House.
“I want to address another important topic about cellphones that we need to finally resolve: hands-free driving,” Reynolds said as she also advocated for a cellphone ban in Iowa’s classrooms. “Cellphones are a distraction in the classroom; they’re deadly on the highway.”
In attendance was the family of Roland Taylor, a man who was killed by a distracted driver two years ago. Reynolds said the driver was on his phone seven out of the nine minutes he was driving before the crash.
The governor met Taylor’s wife and his two daughters over the summer, she said. The family told Reynolds they don’t want any other family to go what they’ve been through and have been strong advocates for a hands-free law.
“For the sake of all our loved ones on the road, let’s finally pass legislation that requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road and away from their phones,” Reynolds said.
House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, said Democrats “stand ready to support” legislation.
“It’s safer for drivers, safer for workers and safer for people who are on the roads, walking or riding their bikes,” she said. “It is a no-brainer, and the reason it’s not getting out of the Iowa House is because Republicans can’t agree on what we need to do, and Democrats are ready to help.”
Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, agreed.
“The Senate passed it last time, 47 to 3,” she said. “I imagine the Senate will pass it again, and I would also add that it will save lives, and it’s been a law enforcement priority for some time.”
Top Republican lawmakers had generally positive reactions to Reynolds’ proposal for the legislation when speaking to reporters Tuesday night.
Senate lawmakers already have introduced their own bill, Senate File 22. The measure is sponsored by 17 Republican senators, or half the caucus.
Senate President Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, said, “it’s been the year for hands-free in the Senate for several years,” pointing to the Senate’s past passage of similar legislation.
“I think the governor coming out with it brings it to the forefront. You know, I think it’s important that that we look at the data, and the data say that distracted driving takes lives. And that’s not my opinion, it’s not the governor’s opinion, it’s reality. And I look forward to the House coming on board and seeing where we can go with that.”
House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, said the House has made “multiple attempts” to pass different versions of the legislation over the years. But the measure has never passed the chamber. He said he expects to have a conversation about the bill again this year.
“I can say, for me personally I’ve kind of moved into a position of, if we can do something in a responsible way, and look at what some other states have done to find a balance, I think it’s something that I would be supportive of,” he said.
Hands-free bill would make Iowa the best place it can be, advocate says
Legislation banning the use of electronic devices while driving has failed to pass in the Iowa Legislature for several years, despite repeated advocacy efforts from law enforcement, and other groups, such as cyclists.
Luke Hoffman, director the Iowa Bicycle Coalition, a statewide assemblage of cycling interests, said its agenda this year is topped by an all-out push to pass long-sought legislation requiring that drivers’ use of communications devices like cellphones be hands-free while they’re at the wheel.
Hoffman has been an advocate for banning distracted driving for a long time and was even involved in a crash while cycling last summer, he told the Register. A truck whose driver was distracted by his dog swerved and sideswiped Hoffman, who managed to stay upright but suffered shock and bruising.
Hoffman has spoken to families that were affected by distracted drivers and has been trying to support the hands-free bill for the safety of those on the road, he said.
“I was very cognizant of the impacts and had seen the personal results of a lack of this law, but it was a different thing to be personally impacted,” Hoffman said. “I think it definitely needs to be done for our state if we want to make it the best place to live, work and play.”
The hands-free bill would provide safety and peace of mind, Hoffman said. The coalition has been fervidly supporting officials who want to make streets safer for Iowans.
Hoffman said hearing Reynolds support the law in the Condition of State address brought tears to his eyes. “Me and my fiancee both jumped from our seats and yelled because we were so excited,” Hoffman said.
He said it was a culmination of a very emotional process after hearing the many tragic stories from families who have been impacted by distracted drivers.
“Hands-free to me means making Iowa the best place it can be, it means making people have peace of mind and feel safe, it means justice for victims of families that have been impacted by this and it means moving our state forward so we that can focus all the other things we need to do,” Hoffman said.
José Mendiola is a breaking news reporter for the Register. Reach him at jmendiola@dmreg.com or follow him on X @mendiola_news.
EUGENE, Oregon (KCRG) – It came down to the wire, but the Iowa women fell just short against the Oregon Ducks in Matthew Knight Arena.
Iowa led most of the game, going into the final 10 minutes with a 41-35 advantage, but a late surge put Oregon ahead of the Hawkeyes. The Ducks were able to hold on and edge past the Hawkeyes 49-50.
Sydney Affolter earned a double-double, scoring 10 points and getting a career-high 15 rebounds. Addi O’Grady had 10 points and 2 rebounds.
Up next, the Hawkeyes travel to Alaska Airlines Arena to play the Washington Huskies on Wednesday, January 22
Copyright 2025 KCRG. All rights reserved.
Here is a look at this week’s High School on SI Top 15 Iowa high school boys basketball power rankings for the week of Jan. 20. To be eligible, you must be ranked in the Top 5 of the class rankings:
1. West Des Moines Valley (10-2)
Previous rank: 5
Next game: Jan. 21 at Ankeny Centennial
2. Cedar Rapids Kennedy (9-2)
Previous rank: 4
Next game: Jan. 21 at Dubuque Hempstead
3. Clear Lake (10-0)
Previous rank: 3
Next game: Jan. 20 at Algona
4. Grand View Christian (13-0)
Previous rank: 6
Next game: Jan. 21 at West Marshall
5. Linn-Mar (9-2)
Previous rank: Not ranked
Next game: Jan. 21 at Iowa City High
6. Cedar Falls (11-1)
Previous rank: 1
Next game: Jan. 21 vs. Iowa City Liberty
7. MOC-Floyd Valley (10-2)
Previous rank: 7
Next game: Jan. 21 vs. West Lyon
8. West Lyon (11-1)
Previous rank: 8
Next game: Jan. 21 at MOC-Floyd Valley
9. Madrid (13-0)
Previous rank: 9
Next game: Jan. 21 vs. Woodward-Granger
10. Bellevue Marquette (13-0)
Previous rank: 10
Next game: Jan. 21 at Prince of Peace
11. Ballard (10-0)
Previous rank: 12
Next game: Jan. 21 at Boone
12. Grundy Center (12-0)
Previous rank: 13
Next game: Jan. 21 vs. South Hardin
13. Council Bluffs Lincoln (10-0)
Previous rank: Not ranked
Next game: Jan. 20 vs. Gretna
14. Western Christian (11-2)
Previous rank: Not ranked
Next game: Jan. 20 vs. Remsen St. Mary’s
15. Storm Lake (9-1)
Previous rank: Not ranked
Next game: Jan. 21 vs. Spirit Lake
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