Iowa’s Supreme Court to lower court: State’s abortion law is legal

Snap election: A woman casts her ballot in Iran’s presidential election Friday at a polling station at the shrine of Saint Saleh in Tehran. Iran’s Guardian Council approved six candidates for election to replace President Ebrahim Raisi, who died last month in a helicopter crash. Polls closed shortly after midnight, with initial results expected sometime Saturday. Majid Saeedi/Getty

DES MOINES, Iowa — The state’s strict abortion law is legal, the Iowa Supreme Court said Friday, telling a lower court to dissolve a temporary block on the law and allowing Iowa to ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy — before many women know they are pregnant.

The 4-3 ruling is a win for Republican lawmakers, and Iowa joins more than a dozen other states with restrictive abortion laws since the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The instructions to the lower court will be formally sent in 21 days and, for now, abortion remains legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. It is unclear how long the district court would take to act after that point.

Currently, 14 states have near-total bans at all stages of pregnancy, and three ban abortions at about six weeks.

The Iowa Supreme Court’s majority instructed courts to assess whether the government has a legitimate interest in restricting the procedure, rather than whether there is too heavy a burden for people seeking abortion access.

In writing the majority’s opinion, Justice Matthew McDermott said a right to an abortion is “not rooted at all in our state’s history and tradition.” In fact, the majority determined it was the opposite.

“The state’s interest in protecting the unborn can be traced to Iowa’s earliest days,” he wrote.

But Chief Justice Susan Christensen emphatically delivered a dissent, writing that the majority opinion “strips Iowa women of their bodily autonomy.”

Christensen countered McDermott, saying the majority’s “rigid approach relies heavily on the male-dominated history and traditions of the 1800s” and said the Iowa Constitution was not written to reflect the full and equal rights of women.

The Iowa law passed with exclusively Republican support in a one-day special session last July. A legal challenge was filed the next day by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic.

The law was in effect for a few days before a district court judge put it on pause, a decision that GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds appealed.

Texas transgender law: The Texas Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youths Friday, rejecting pleas from parents that it violates their right to decide on and seek medical care for their children.

The 8-1 ruling from the all-Republican court leaves in place a law in effect since Sept. 1. It prevents transgender people younger than 18 from accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and transition surgeries.

“We conclude the Legislature made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children, particularly in light of the relative nascency of both gender dysphoria and its various modes of treatment and the Legislature’s express constitutional authority to regulate the practice of medicine,” Justice Rebeca Aizpuru Huddle wrote in the court’s decision.

Boeing capsule: Two NASA astronauts will stay longer at the International Space Station as engineers troubleshoot problems on Boeing’s new space capsule that cropped up on the trip there.

NASA did not set a return date Friday until testing on the ground was complete and said the astronauts were safe.

“We’re not in any rush to come home,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.

Veteran NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams blasted off June 5 aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the orbiting laboratory. The test flight was expected to last a week or so, but problems with the capsule’s propulsion system, used to maneuver the spacecraft, prompted NASA and Boeing to delay the flight home several times while they analyzed the trouble.

NASA initially said the Starliner could stay docked at the space station for up to 45 days, but in-flight tests have shown that limit can be extended, Stich said.

Russia missiles: Russian President Vladimir Putin called Friday for resuming production of intermediate-range missiles that were banned under a now-scrapped treaty with the United States.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, which banned ground-based nuclear and conventional missiles with a range of 310 to 3,410 miles, was regarded as an arms control landmark when President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed it in 1988.

The U.S. withdrew from the treaty in 2019, citing Russian violations.

Since withdrawing from the treaty, the U.S. Army has moved forward with developing a conventional, ground-launched, midrange missile capability called the Typhon that would have been banned under the INF. The Army ran the system through tests during an exercise in the Philippines this spring.

Menendez bribery trial: Prosecutors at the bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez rested their case Friday after presenting evidence for seven weeks, enabling lawyers for the Democrat and two New Jersey businessmen to begin calling their own witnesses next week to support their claims that no crimes were committed and no bribes were paid.

Defense attorneys are scheduled to begin presenting their case Monday in Manhattan federal court.

Prosecutors say gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash found in a raid of Menendez’s home two years ago were bribes paid by three businessmen from 2018 to 2022 in return for favors that the senator, using his political power, carried out on their behalf.

Defense lawyers claim the gold belonged to his wife, Nadine, who is also charged, and that Menendez had a habit of storing cash at home after his family lost almost everything in Cuba before they moved to New York, where Menendez was born.

Bolivia coup attempt: Officials in Bolivia announced Friday the arrest of four military officers in connection with a thwarted coup against President Luis Arce’s government, broadening the case to include more suspects in the takeover attempt that shocked the South American country.

Senior Cabinet member Eduardo del Castillo said at a news conference that those newly detained include the driver of a tank that repeatedly rammed into the doors of the government headquarters Wednesday and a former infantry captain accused of giving orders to soldiers who stormed the capital’s central Plaza Murillo.

The total number of those under arrest is 21, including Gen. Juan José Zúñiga, who led the failed coup.

Zúñiga, who was arrested Wednesday and was the commanding general of Bolivia’s army, has alleged, without providing evidence, that Arce ordered him to carry out the rebellion to boost Arce’s flagging popularity.