Iowa’s Republican leaders have been seeking the law for years and gained momentum after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The Iowa Supreme Court also issued a ruling that year saying there was no constitutional right to abortion in the state.

“There is no right more sacred than life,” Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said in June. “I’m glad that the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld the will of the people of Iowa.”

Now, across the country, four states ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and 14 states have near-total bans at all stages of pregnancy.

The law in Iowa and other restrictions across the country will be a focus of the 2024 election, with Republicans celebrating their successes and Democrats criticizing them as an attack on women’s rights. Vice President Kamala Harris, who stands to become the Democratic presidential nominee, has said reproductive rights are at stake this November.

The Harris campaign released a video Monday to draw attention to the issue as Iowa’s law becomes enforceable.

“What we need to do is vote,” she said. “When I am President of the United States, I will sign into law the protections for reproductive freedom.”

Iowa’s abortion providers have been fighting the new law but still preparing for it, shoring up abortion access in neighboring states and drawing on the lessons learned where bans went into effect more swiftly.

They have said they will continue to operate in Iowa in compliance with the new law, but Sarah Traxler, Planned Parenthood North Central States’ chief medical officer, called it a “devastating and dark” moment in state history.

The Iowa law was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in a special session last year, but a legal challenge was immediately filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic. The law was in effect for just a few days before a district judge temporarily blocked it, a decision Gov. Kim Reynolds appealed to the state’s high court.

The Iowa Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling in June reiterated that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in the state and ordered the hold be lifted. A district court judge last week said the hold would be lifted Monday morning.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called it a “historic day for Iowa.”

The law prohibits abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, which is roughly at six weeks. There are limited exceptions in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality or when the life of the mother is in danger. Previously, abortion in Iowa was legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The state’s medical board defined standards of practice for adhering to the law earlier this year, though the rules do not outline disciplinary action or how the board would determine noncompliance.

Three abortion clinics in two Iowa cities offer in-person abortion procedures and will continue to do so before cardiac activity is detected, according to representatives from Planned Parenthood and Emma Goldman.

A law based on cardiac activity is “tricky,” said Traxler, of Planned Parenthood. Since six weeks is approximate, “we don’t necessarily have plans to cut people off at a certain gestational age,” she said.

For over a year, the region’s Planned Parenthood also has been making investments within and outside of Iowa to prepare for the restrictions. Like in other regions, it has dedicated staff to work the phones, helping people find appointments, connect with other providers, arrange travel plans or financial assistance.

It also is remodeling its center in Omaha, Nebraska, just over the state line and newly offers medication abortion in Mankato, Minnesota, about an hour’s drive from Iowa.

But providers fear the drastic change in access will exacerbate health inequalities for Iowa’s women of color and residents from low-income households.

Across the country, the status of abortion has changed constantly since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, with trigger laws immediately going into effect, states passing new restrictions or expansions of access and court battles putting those on hold.

In states with restrictions, the main abortion options are getting pills via telehealth or underground networks and traveling, vastly driving up demand in states with more access.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa judge has ruled the state’s strict abortion law will take effect Monday, preventing most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

The law passed last year, but a judge had blocked it from being enforced. The Iowa Supreme Court reiterated in June that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in the state and ordered the hold to be lifted. That translated into Monday’s district court judge’s decision ordering the law to into effect next Monday at 8:00 a.m. Central time.

Lawyers representing abortion providers asked Judge Jeffrey Farrell for notice before allowing the law to take hold, saying a buffer period was needed to provide continuity of services. Iowa requires pregnant women to wait 24 hours for an abortion after getting an initial consultation. Abortion had been legal in the state up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The high court’s order gave a decisive win to Iowa’s Republican leaders after years of legislative and legal battles.

Iowa will join more than a dozen states where abortion access has been sharply curbed in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Currently, 14 states have near-total bans at all stages of pregnancy and three states — Iowa will make four — ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

Abortion access stands to be a major issue in the 2024 election, especially as Vice President Kamala Harris aims to lead the Democratic Party. Harris has said “everything is at stake” with reproductive health in November’s election and has traveled across the country to draw attention to the issue, including in Des Moines roughly a year ago after the stricter law initially passed.

Iowa’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in a special session last July, and a legal challenge was immediately filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic. The law was in effect for just a few days before a district court judge temporarily blocked it.

“Today is a victory for life,” Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a statement Tuesday.

There are limited circumstances under the Iowa law that would allow for abortion after six weeks of pregnancy: rape, if reported to law enforcement or a health provider within 45 days; incest, if reported within 145 days; if the fetus has an abnormality “incompatible with life”; or if the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life.

The state’s medical board defined standards of practice earlier this year, though the rules do not outline how the board would determine noncompliance or what the appropriate disciplinary action might be.

Representatives from Planned Parenthood and the Emma Goldman Clinic have indicated they will continue to provide abortion services in Iowa in compliance with the law when it takes effect.

In June, Ruth Richardson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, also said the organization has spent the last year making “long-term regional investments” in preparation for this outcome, including expanding facilities in Mankato, Minnesota, and in Omaha, Nebraska, — both cities near Iowa.

Planned Parenthood in Iowa has ceased abortion services in two Iowa cities in the last year, including in Des Moines. Two of the state’s five Planned Parenthood clinics offer in-person abortion services, and three offer abortion through medication.

People in and around Des Moines seeking an abortion have been traveling about 35 miles (56 kilometers) north to Ames.

Alex Sharp, who manages the Ames facility, said conversations with patients will be difficult once the ban lifts and staff will be empathetic. There is “the sensitivity of being told you’re too far along and it’s too late now: ‘You have to, you know, leave and go somewhere else and you have to travel and you’re going to have to miss work again.’”

“A lot of people don’t know this happened,” Sharp said of the stricter law.

The facilities that provide abortions had been offering additional appointments in June ahead of the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision, and appointments throughout July have been completely booked, Sharp said.

“It’s entirely possible that they’re over six weeks, but we’ll scan them,” she said of people that have appointments scheduled for after the block is lifted.

Sarah Traxler, the Planned Parenthood region’s medical director, said a law prohibiting abortions after cardiac activity can be detected is “tricky.”

Since six weeks is approximate, Traxler said, “we don’t necessarily have plans to cut people off at a certain gestational age.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 44% of the 3,761 total abortions in Iowa in 2021 occurred at or before six weeks’ gestational age. Only six abortions were at the 21-week mark or later.

In other states with bans that kick in around six weeks into pregnancy, the number of abortions has fallen by about half.

In its 4-3 opinion last month, Iowa Supreme Court’s majority determined that abortion laws in Iowa are to be judged by 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.

The decision was celebrated by Iowa’s conservative leaders who have advocated for decades against access to abortion. Chuck Hurley, vice president of the conservative Christian organization, The Family Leader, said “bad judges for over 51 years” allowed access to abortion in Iowa.

While Hurley celebrated the victory and the “great strides in protecting the most innocent among us,” he alluded to the work still to be done.

“Fourteen states now protect babies from the moment of conception,” he said, “and Iowa should be the 15th.”

___

Associated Press reporter Geoff Mulvihill contributed from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC entered into a consent judgment, in which the company agrees to nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employs minors. The February filing indicated federal investigators believed at least four children had still been working at one Iowa slaughterhouse as of Dec. 12.

U.S. law prohibits companies from employing people younger than 18 to work in meat processing plants because of the hazards.

The Labor Department alleged that Fayette used 15 underage workers at a Perdue Farms plant in Accomac, Virginia, and at least nine at Seaboard Triumph Foods in Sioux City, Iowa. The work included sanitizing dangerous equipment like head splitters, jaw pullers and meat bandsaws in hazardous conditions where animals are killed and rendered.

One 14-year-old was severely injured while cleaning the drumstick packing line belt at the plant in Virginia, the investigation alleged.

Perdue Farms and Seaboard Triumph Foods said in February they terminated their contracts with Fayette.

The agreement stipulates that Fayette will hire a third-party consultant to monitor the company’s compliance with child labor laws for at least three years, as well as to facilitate trainings. The company must also establish a hotline for individuals to report concerns about child labor abuses.

A spokesperson for Fayette told The Associated Press in February that the company was cooperating with the investigation and has a “zero-tolerance policy for minor labor.”

The Labor Department has called attention to a growing list of child labor violations across the country, including the fatal mangling of a 16-year-old working at a Mississippi poultry plant, the death of a 16-year-old after an accident at a sawmill in Wisconsin, and last year’s report of more than 100 children illegally employed by Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, across 13 meatpacking plants. PSSI paid over $1.5 million in civil penalties.

The Labor Department’s latest statistics indicate the number of children being employed illegally in the U.S. has increased 88% since 2019.

The Labor Department asked a federal judge for an injunction to halt the employment of minors by Tennessee-based Fayette Janitorial Service LLC, saying it believes at least four children were still working at one Iowa slaughterhouse as of Dec. 12.

U.S. law prohibits companies from employing people younger than 18 to work in meat processing plants because of the hazards involved. The Labor Department alleges that Fayette has used underage workers in hazardous conditions where animals are killed and rendered. The agency says children sanitize dangerous equipment, including head splitters, jaw pullers and meat bandsaws.

The department’s legal filing details the severe injuries one 14-year-old sustained while cleaning the drumstick packing line belt at a plant in Virginia. Records show Fayette learned the worker was underage after the child was injured and continued to employ the minor anyway, according to an investigator.

The Associated Press left phone and email messages seeking comment from Fayette.

The latest findings add to a growing list of violations, including the fatal mangling of a 16-year-old working at a Mississippi poultry plant, the death of a 16-year-old after an accident at a sawmill in Wisconsin, and last year’s report of more than 100 children illegally employed by Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, across 13 meatpacking plants. PSSI paid over $1.5 million in civil penalties.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sent a letter to the 18 largest meat and poultry producers last year to highlight the issue as part of the administration’s effort to crack down on child labor violations more broadly. The Labor Department’s latest statistics indicate the number of children being employed illegally in the U.S. has increased 88% since 2019.

Tyson, Perdue face child labor investigations on Eastern Shore

The cleaning company works in about 30 states and employs more than 600 workers, according to the department, and the investigation is ongoing. The initial findings identified 15 underage Fayette employees at a Perdue Farms plant in Accomac, Virginia, and at least nine at Seaboard Triumph Foods in Sioux City, Iowa.

A spokesperson for Perdue Farms said in an email that the company terminated its contract with Fayette before the filing but declined to specify further. A request for comment was left with Seaboard Triumph Foods.

“I never read ‘Mein Kampf,’” Trump said at a campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa, referencing Adolf Hitler’s fascist manifesto.

Immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Trump said Tuesday, are “destroying the blood of our country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country.”

In the speech to more than 1,000 supporters from a podium flanked by Christmas trees in red MAGA hats, Trump responded to mounting criticism about his anti-immigrant “blood” purity rhetoric over the weekend. Several politicians and extremism experts have noted his language echoed writings from Hitler about the “purity” of Aryan blood, which underpinned Nazi Germany’s systematic murder of millions of Jews and other “undesirables” before and during World War II.

As illegal border crossings surge, topping 10,000 some days in December, Trump continued to blast Biden for allowing migrants to “pour into our country.” He alleged, without offering evidence, that they bring crime and potentially disease with them.

“They come from Africa, they come from Asia, they come from South America,” he said, lamenting what he said was a “border catastrophe.”

Trump made no mention of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday to disqualify him from the state’s ballot under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause, though his campaign blasted out a fundraising email about it during his speech.

The former president has long used inflammatory language about immigrants coming to the U.S., dating back to his campaign launch in 2015, when he said immigrants from Mexico are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”

But Trump has espoused increasingly authoritarian messages in his third campaign, vowing to renew and add to his effort to bar citizens from certain Muslim-majority countries, and to expand “ ideological screening ” for people immigrating to the U.S. He said he would be a dictator on “day one” only, in order to close the border and increase drilling.

In Waterloo on Tuesday, Trump’s supporters in the crowd said his border policies were effective and necessary, even if he doesn’t always say the right thing.

“I don’t know if he says the right words all of the time,” said 63-year-old Marylee Geist, adding that just because “you’re not fortunate enough to be born in this country,” doesn’t mean “you don’t get to come here.”

“But it should all be done legally,” she added.

It’s about the volume of border crossings and national security, said her husband, John Geist, 68.

“America is the land of opportunity, however, the influx — it needs to be kept to a certain level,” he said. “The amount of undocumented immigrants that come through and you don’t know what you’re getting, things aren’t regulated properly.”

Alex Litterer and her dad, Tom, of Charles City said they were concerned about migrants crossing the southern border, especially because the U.S. doesn’t have the resources to support that influx. But the 22-year-old said she didn’t agree with Trump’s comments, adding that immigrants who come to the country legally contribute to the country’s character and bring different perspectives.

Polling shows most Americans agree, with two-thirds saying the country’s diverse population makes the U.S. stronger.

But Trump’s “blood” purity message might resonate with some voters.

About a third of Americans overall worry that more immigration is causing U.S.-born Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence, according to a late 2021 poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Jackie Malecek, 50, of Waterloo said she likes Trump for the reasons that many people don’t — how outspoken he is and “that he’s a little bit of a loose cannon.” But she thought Trump saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood” took it a little too far.

“I’m very much for cutting off what’s happening at the border now. There’s too many people pouring in here right now, I watch it every single day,” Malecek said. “But that wording is not what I would have chosen to say.”

Malecek supports allowing legal immigration and accepting refugees, but she is concerned about the waves of migrants crossing the border who are not being vetted.

Sen. JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio, lashed out at a reporter asking about Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comments, defending them as a reference to overdoses from fentanyl smuggled over the border.

“You just framed your question implicitly assuming that Donald Trump is talking about Adolf Hitler. It’s absurd,” Vance said. “It is obvious that he was talking about the very clear fact that the blood of Americans is being poisoned by a drug epidemic.”

At a congressional hearing July 12, James Mandryck, a Customs and Border Protection deputy assistant commissioner, said 73% of fentanyl seizures at the border since the previous October were smuggling attempts carried out by U.S. citizens, with the rest being done by Mexican citizens.

Extremism experts say Trump’s rhetoric resembles the language that white supremacist shooters have used to justify mass killings.

Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, pointed to the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooter and the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooter, who he said used similar language in writings before their attacks.

“Call it what it is,” said Lewis. “This is fascism. This is white supremacy. This is dehumanizing language that would not be out of place in a white supremacist Signal or Telegram chat.”

Asked about Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comments, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell replied with a quip about his own wife, an immigrant, who was an appointee in Trump’s administration.

“Well, it strikes me that didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao Secretary of Transportation,” McConnell said.

Trump currently leads other candidates, by far, in polls of likely Republican voters in Iowa and nationwide. Trump’s campaign is hoping for a knockout performance in the caucuses that will deny his rivals momentum and allow him to quickly lock up the nomination. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has staked his campaign on Iowa, raising expectations for him there.

“I will not guarantee it,” Trump said of winning Iowa next month, “but I pretty much guarantee it.”

___

This story has been corrected to change a reference to this year’s Texas mall shooting to the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting.

___

Associated Press reporters Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.