A protester shares his views on abortion at the Kansas Capitol in January 2024. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)
More than half of state legislatures across the country started their 2024 legislative sessions in January, and plenty of abortion-related bills have already been introduced, especially in states where the procedure is already banned. It can be hard to monitor them all, so States Newsroom’s Reproductive Rights Today team will track certain bills that could become law in their respective states in a bi-weekly legislative roundup. Depending on the partisan makeup of a state’s legislature and other state government officials, some bills have a higher chance of passing and becoming law than others.
Iowa
Abortion is legal in Iowa after a court blocked a six-week abortion ban from going into effect in July 2023, but Iowa Capital Dispatch reports some lawmakers are attempting to include material produced by an anti-abortion group in the public school curriculum statewide.
House File 2031 : According to the bill, a video showing the development of a fetus would be required to be shown in health classes in Iowa schools. Teachers would be required to show students a video displaying an ultrasound and fetal development, and the bill called out the “Meet Baby Olivia” video as an example. That video is produced by Live Action , an anti-abortion organization. Reproductive rights groups say the video contains medically inaccurate information. A similar bill became law in North Dakota in 2023, and proposals have been introduced in Missouri, Kentucky and West Virginia, but only Iowa’s bill has advanced past committee so far.