maternal health

On this legislative episode of River to River, we look at some of the bills regarding reproductive health that have advanced at the Iowa Capitol.

Republicans in the Iowa House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would raise criminal penalties for nonconsensually causing "the death of an unborn person.” Democrats said they fear it would jeopardize IVF access in Iowa.

Iowa has among the fewest number of OB-GYN specialists per capita of any state in the country, according to 2022 data from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The report by the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform analyzed federal data and found 61 percent of rural Iowa hospitals no longer deliver babies.

At a time when many rural hospitals continue to make the tough choice to shutter their obstetrics units and stop delivering babies, some have found ways to make their units survive and, sometimes, even thrive.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ proposal to extend Medicaid pregnancy coverage from 60 days postpartum to a year after giving birth passed in the Senate Monday. Her bill would also lower the program’s income limit so fewer pregnant Iowans and infants would qualify for Medicaid, keeping government costs from significantly increasing.

Iowa would become one of the last states to extend Medicaid coverage for pregnant women 12 months after giving birth under a bill advanced by a Senate subcommittee Monday.

The state of Iowa could directly send taxpayer dollars to anti-abortion pregnancy centers without using a third-party administrator under a new proposal in the Legislature.

A new lawsuit filed by Johnson County OB/GYNs who were at the center of a 2022 exceptional medical malpractice case have filed a lawsuit claiming their insurance company put its own financial interests above its clients' and used the case to influence Iowa politicians to pass tort reform.

Iowa received its first blanket of snow over the holiday weekend.