SF 471 - Prohibits Abortion After 20 Weeks of Pregnancy

Policy analysis
Name
Institutional Affiliation
What is the bill title? Moreover, what state (s) does it represent?
The bill title is “SF 471-Prohibits Abortion after 20 Weeks of Pregnancy.” The bill represents the state of Iowa (Vote Smart, 2017).
When will go into effect?
According to Vote Smart, the bill became law on May 5, 2017 (Vote Smart, 2017).
What problem is this bill attempting to resolve?
The bill attempts to resolve the problem of abortions in the state of Iowa by reducing their occurrences particularly after five months (Vote Smart, 2017). According to Vote Smart, the bill seeks to achieve this in several ways. One, by barring the intentional attempt to procure an abortion from the fifth to sixth month of pregnancy despite it causing or not causing the death of the fetus. Two, defining an abortion after five months as feticide during an attempted abortion as attempted feticide. Three, the bill classifies feticide as a class C felony and attempting to terminate a pregnancy as a class D felony (Vote Smart, 2017). Four, the law permits the procurement of abortion after twenty weeks when the life of the mother is at high risk of physical and irreparable harm. Finally, the bill enumerates that in the best clinical judgment abortion after 20 weeks can occur if it tests show that the fetus suffers anomalies that would make it impossible for them to survive (Vote Smart, 2017).
How will this improve or hurt healthcare and the social determinants of health?
How will this improve healthcare?
Banning of abortions after twenty weeks of gestation will improve healthcare by helping doctors concentrate on treating premature babies and extend their survival rates. Most women, who wait up to the 20th week for an abortion, account for about one percent of all abortions in the United States. A high number of these women choose to terminate due to fetal abnormalities, which are risky to treat or which makes the life for a young baby difficult after birth. However, medical science has made significant steps towards treating babies in the womb, premature babies and ensuring they survive (Jones & Weitz, 2009, pp. 623-24). Therefore, the ban will help promote medical science towards concentrating on neonatal medicine to treat conditions such as spinal bifida, congenital heart diseases among others thereby making abortion unnecessary.
The ban will improve healthcare by preventing severe and fatal consequences of late-term abortions for women. Abortion from twenty- weeks imposes serious medical complications on women such as blood clots, bleeding, incomplete abortion, infections and some instances death (Jones & Weitz, 2009, pp. 623). Thus, banning abortion from this period helps reduce the number of women who suffer from these conditions thereby improving healthcare.
How will it hurt healthcare?
The ban of second-trimester abortion will hurt healthcare by forcing clinicians to engage in unethical behavior of utilizing other techniques of performing the abortions legally. Clinicians are opting to use medication to cause the deaths of the fetus so that they can lawfully procure abortions as a way of continuing to provide abortion care to patients, (Jones & Weitz, 2009, pp. 627). As a re...