DES MOINES, Iowa (LifeSiteNews) – The Iowa Legislature gave final approval to legislation that would ban the dispensing of abortion pills via telehealth, sending the bill to Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds for her likely signature.

House File 2788 requires abortion-inducing drugs to only be dispensed in person and come with written consent after informing the woman about the medical risks of abortion drugs, the emotional trauma that can come from seeing one’s dead baby expelled, and recommendations to follow up with a doctor within two weeks of taking the drugs. The bill does not contain an earlier version’s language that also would have required providing information about abortion pill reversal or detailed reporting requirements about complications.

Iowa’s heartbeat-based ban forbids abortions after six weeks except for cases of rape, incest, or alleged medical emergencies, so the bill would apply to abortions within that six-week window.

HF 2788 passed the state Senate 30-11 and the state House 58-29, and now awaits final approval from Reynolds, who signed the state’s heartbeat law.

“By requiring in-person screenings, we are giving these women a lifeline,” Republican Rep. Devon Wood argued. “We are providing a private, clinical sanctuary where an expert can look them in the eye and ask, ‘Are you safe?’ That opportunity for intervention is lost the moment that we remove this process to a computer screen, a phone or a mailbox.”

Mail-order abortion pills make chemical abortions even in pro-life states extremely difficult to prevent. The latest data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found 1,125,930 clinical abortions in 2025, a slight increase from 2024, which Guttmacher attributed in large part to abortion pills. Planned Parenthood’s 2024-2025 annual report boasts it alone committed 434,450 abortions, a record number for the organization and 8% more than the previous year.

Abortion pills have become key to the abortion lobby’s effort to preserve “access” in a post-Roe v. Wade environment despite the risks to the women who take them.

Pro-lifers point to an April 2025 analysis by the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) that concluded almost 11% of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other major conditions after taking mifepristone, according to insurance data, plus similar findings by the Restoration of America Foundation as part of a “growing body of evidence indicating that the health risks associated with mifepristone abortions are severe, widespread, and significantly underreported.

In May 2025, the Trump administration promised to review the safety data on abortion pills, giving hope of reversal of its stance, but nearly a year without updates has prompted frustration among pro-lifers, with Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri going so far as to question if the study is underway at all. Administration officials insist that review is still coming, though frustrated pro-lifers have argued a new official finding on the pills’ safety should not be necessary to restore enforcement of the federal law against mailing abortion pills across state lines.

The fight intensified last week when the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Louisiana and temporarily blocked the FDA’s abortion pill rules, but the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently put a stay on that order while the justices consider the matter, allowing the pills to resume.