Right Before The Holiday Weekend, Iowa Quietly Eliminated Abortion Access For Low-Income Women

Right as the Labor Day weekend began, Iowa officials took steps to severely limit reproductive health access for women in the state. Although that move went largely unnoticed before the three-day weekend, it could end up having a huge impact on the future of abortion care for people across the country.

On Friday, Iowa’s Board of Medicine voted to eliminate the largest telemedicine abortion program in the country. That means doctors in the state won’t be allowed to use video technology to prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to rural and low-income women who don’t have the means to travel to the nearest clinic — even though they’ve been safely doing so for the past five years.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has been operating its telemedicine abortion program since 2008, and there’s no reason it should have come under any kind of particular scrutiny this summer. Studies have repeatedly found that it’s a safe method of delivering reproductive care, and patients are just as satisfied after speaking with a doctor over a video conference as they are after making an in-person trip to a clinic. Nonetheless, the Board of Medicine has been considering banning the practice for the past several months — and the Friday vote makes it official.

“This decision is a political attack aimed at restricting access to abortion in Iowa. Proponents of this rule aren’t against telemedicine technology; they are against safe, legal abortion and are unjustly targeting our system with no scientific information or evidence to back their claims,” Planned Parenthood of the Heartland’s president, Jill June, said in a statement.

[link to thinkprogress.org]