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A lawsuit challenging the nation's most restrictive abortion law was filed Tuesday in Iowa, a state that for years was largely left out of Republican efforts to overturn abortion protections and where the Democratic attorney general has refused to defend the law. If allowed to take effect on July 1 as planned, the law would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, around the sixth week of pregnancy. Abortion-rights groups say that's a time when many women do not know they are pregnant. (Rodriguez, 5/15)

Abortion rights advocates filed a lawsuit in an Iowa district court Tuesday seeking to block Iowa’s newest abortion law — known as “the heartbeat bill” — which bans most abortions at about the sixth week of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. The law is among the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. The Iowa law is part of a flurry of legislation that aims to test the legality of abortion restrictions, as some Republicans want legal challenges to the laws to reach the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to overturn its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. In Mississippi this year, GOP lawmakers passed a 15-week abortion ban that was signed by Mississippi’s Republican governor, but the law was quickly put on hold after a court challenge. (Wax-Thibodeaux, 5/15)

Critics say that the law would make abortions illegal in cases where women may not yet have realized that they're pregnant. Iowa's current law allows most abortions up to 20 weeks into a pregnancy. The lawsuit was filed in Iowa state court. "Not only is this law blatantly unconstitutional — it's extremely harmful to women," Planned Parenthood said in a statement about the lawsuit. The group says that Iowa's legislature ignored the legal rights guaranteed in the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, as well as Iowa's own constitution. (Chappell, 5/15)