An Iowa judge has blocked the restrictions that the Iowa legislature had placed on "death Roe" abortions.  And the Iowa attorney general wouldn't defend the new law anyway.

A local TV news outlet summarizes the issue in this way:

An Iowa judge has halted the state's fetal heartbeat abortion law while a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality is resolved, The Associated Press and Des Moines Register report.

The Register reports the law was to take effect July 1 after Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the bill on May 4.

The law bans all abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually about six weeks into a pregnancy.

A Friday hearing in Iowa's Polk County District Court was to ask a judge to temporarily block the law, the Register reports.

The fact is that Roe v. Wade gives permission for states to restrict abortions. 

In Section VIII (emphasis added):

[M]ost of these courts have agreed that the right of privacy, however based, is broad enough to cover the abortion decision; that the right, nonetheless, is not absolute, and is subject to some limitations; and that, at some point, the state interests as to protection of health, medical standards, and prenatal life, become dominant. We agree with this approach.

In Section X (emphasis added):

We repeat, however, that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman, whether she be a resident of the State or a nonresident who seeks medical consultation and treatment there, and that it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life.

Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion, says the restrictions on abortion come after viability, which he places in a range between 24 and 28 weeks.  However, this is arbitrary and primitive, considering that he calls the fetus "potential life" in several passages.  No, it is not potential life, for the fetus really is alive.  A baby at any stage in the pregnancy is always living, not potentially living.

Let's leave aside the observation that the big flaw in our Constitution is the over-reaching power of a local judiciary, deriving its power from Article Three, which can halt the will of the people expressed through the legislature, which derives its power from Article One.  The legislative branch comes first, the judiciary third.

The fact is, judges should not be deciding these complex social issues to begin with, particularly abortion.  Roe v. Wade (1973) was expansive interpretation of an eighteenth-century document based on a "shady" notion of penumbral rights.  This is especially egregious when the Constitution is silent on abortion.

Legislatures, in contrast, can call in and call on all sorts of experts to testify before a committee, whom the committee members cross-examine.  Politicians do not have to become instant experts as justice Blackmun became in his own mind, apparently not realizing that he was actually unqualified.  He read tendentious scholars who supported his views, and he could not challenge these scholars before his court.

The only solution is to elect politicians who will appoint judges who respect the limitations on Article Three.  In turn, these judges will stop thwarting Articles One and Two and remain silent when the Constitution is silent and turn these issues over to the legislature.

James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People, where he has posted Deconstructing Roe v. Wade, Can the Book of Exodus Be Rationalized (Away)?, and Do Christians Have to 'Keep' the Ten Commandments?