When Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down a 72-hour waiting period for abortions only one month after Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the “Heartbeat Bill” into law, the Court’s majority opinion claimed to have found a “fundamental right to abortion” in the Iowa Constitution.
Of course, no such right exists in the plain reading of the Iowa Constitution.
And now the lawyer who defended Iowa’s Heartbeat Law in court is calling out the Iowa Supreme Court for abusing its power by effectively amending the Iowa Constitution without a vote of the people.
Attorney Martin Cannon of Thomas More Society argues in a Des Moines Register op-ed that the Iowa Supreme Court “has violated the right of all Iowans to self-governance.”
“The violation lies not so much in its rejection of the three-day waiting period on abortions,” explains Cannon, “as in the sweeping method by which the court rejected it.”
Cannon makes a case that is clearly far more than sour grapes over Heartbeat’s eventual court defeat. Cannon contends the Court has adopted a “living constitution” philosophy that enables it to ignore the intent of the Constitution’s writers and rule according to its own opinions instead.
This amounts to “government by the judiciary,” Cannon writes.
In fact, the Court’s majority opinion in the 72-hour case did assert that today’s judges are “freed … from the private views of the Constitution’s founders” to interpret the Constitution according to “current prevailing [and] evolving standards” instead.
Read for yourself just how radical the Supreme Court’s 72-hour decision is!
Not only does this judicial philosophy lead to error, Cannon writes, but it also violates the Constitution itself.
“The court majority,” Cannon argues, “has ignored Iowa’s people as the primary source of authority for every branch of Iowa government and has usurped the role of Iowans as the only current authors of their constitution.”
There is, however, something Iowans can do about it. The constitutional amendment process allows “We the People” to correct the courts by reasserting that, “No, there is no right to abortion – nor mandate that taxpayers fund abortion – in the Iowa Constitution.”
Currently, The FAMiLY LEADER is one of the leading organizations supporting a constitutional amendment that would correct the courts and restore the right of We the People to set abortion policy.
