Concerned Women for America (CWA) submitted an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief in support of the state of Iowa’s efforts to establish a culture of life and curtail abortion radicalism in the Hawkeye State. The brief challenges Planned Parenthood and other abortion doctors’ ability to bring legal challenges to the state’s pro-life laws. Here is our summary of our argument in Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v. Reynolds:

Appellees lack third-party standing to bring these claims. Possessing no constitutional right to perform abortions, they rely on a now-overruled, court-created constitutional right of women to obtain abortions to claim the legal requirements necessary to assert third-party standing. Since the Iowa Constitution, as the U.S. Supreme Court found in the U.S. Constitution in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, “makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” i the Court should not grant third-party standing because the required underlying  justifications are not present in the context of abortion. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” 

But even if the Court were to find otherwise, Appellees still lack a sufficiently close relationship to women seeking abortion in Iowa. The record shows no evidence to the contrary, and the Court should refuse to ignore this significant legal requirement they need to prove when assessing their claims on behalf of women.

Similarly, Appellees have failed to establish a record showing that Iowa women are hindered from bringing suit to vindicate their own alleged rights. Women have brought such cases with some regularity, including Roe v. Wade. Today, fifty years after that first claim brought by a woman, the resources and education on the issue are much more robust, so that women need not rely on entities such as Appellees, whose interests are not aligned and, in fact, are sometimes in direct conflict with the interests of women, to bring their claims. (Internal citations omitted.)

Click here to read CWA’s brief in its entirety.