On February 14, 2025, the University of Iowa College of Law’s Lawyering for Reproductive Justice (“LRJ”) organization is hosting a donation drive for abortion aftercare kits on the law school’s campus. When marketing their event, LRJ created an infographic to share online on their social media platforms and distribute printed copies around the school. With a red backdrop and a pink heart character uplifting another smaller heart, the infographic is charming but effective. It reads in large print at the top, “[e]veryone loves someone who’s had an abortion.” The details include location and times to drop off donations and a smaller message that reads “spread the love this year with LRJ.” Straight to the point and eye-catching, this graphic has it all, but apparently it has one word too many.

When LRJ sought to distribute the graphic around the College of Law, members of the LRJ board were contacted by Iowa Law staff members. Their problem? The word “abortion.” LRJ was then told not to use the word, and that the infographic for their donation drive event had to be changed before it could be posted throughout the College of Law. Their reasoning? The word “abortion” is too sensitive of a topic to display throughout the building. The student group was told that their signage would meet apparent display standards as long as the sign did not include the word “abortion.”[1]

LRJ members and other students, including those on the Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, caught wind of the restriction and organized to address the suppression of LRJ’s speech. Word of the restriction spread quickly among concerned students and faculty. Quietly, the decision came down from the Iowa Law administration that the word “abortion” did not actually have to be removed from the infographic. No further justification was provided to students as to why the speech was suppressed initially. However, going forward, students were made aware that policies about their organization’s signage would change in the near future. It is hard to determine what this statement could mean – will words like “abortion” be banned from sign usage in the future? What is the basis for doing so? Is this legal?

Partnering with the Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, LRJ has consented to discuss the initial speech suppression and potential legal implications of suppression in the future at Iowa Law in this blog post. This example of speech suppression also warrants an examination of the long-term effects that stigmatizing abortion care will have on Iowa residents.

What is an “Abortion”?

We need to treat abortion for what it is: a medical procedure. Many of the harmful stereotypes that have led to the censorship of “abortion” come from misconceptions about the procedure itself. Looking to the plain meaning of “abortion,” it is the “termination of a pregnancy before the fetus can survive outside the uterus.”[2] This can be planned or unplanned termination. Notably, a “spontaneous abortion” is a medical term for a miscarriage—the sudden loss of a pregnancy typically a result of the fetus not developing properly.[3]

Furthermore, miscarriages also occur incompletely.[4] Incomplete miscarriages put the health and life of the pregnant person at stake. When a fetus is no longer viable in the womb, the body begins to evacuate the fetus. This process sometimes requires medical intervention. The medical intervention required in these cases is identical to an abortion and considered medically necessary to save a pregnant person’s life.[5] The fetus in these scenarios is no longer viable, and if not evacuated from the body fully, the pregnant person is susceptible to a variety of complications, including sepsis,[6] which if not treated promptly, can lead to death.[7]

Abortions are one of the few medical procedures widely misunderstood by the public but elicit polarizing opinions nonetheless.[8] As lawyers, we have the unique responsibility and opportunity to bridge the gap of understanding between science and policy, and to do so truthfully. Limiting the use of the word “abortion” goes against the responsibility vested in our legal educators. 

The Constitutionality of the College of Law’s Restriction

As to whether the College of Law can suppress the word “abortion” from student speech, the answer is no. “In order for . . . school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”[9] Free speech on university campuses is a historically protected practice, and that practice took root right here in Iowa.[10] This protection is widely used, and we need look no further than the numerous times that far-right student groups have reaped the benefits of the First Amendment.[11] Some “inflammatory” speech falls outside the First Amendment’s umbrella of protection, but that is only when that speech clearly intends to incite or produce imminent violence or unlawful action and is likely to immediately produce that effect.[12] It should go without saying that advertising for an abortion aftercare kit drive falls quite far from this threshold. 

One could argue that the school’s prohibition on the “sensitive” word was due to its disruptive nature. Nonetheless, disruptive or divisive speech is still very much protected by the First Amendment.[13] It can also be argued that schools are entitled to restrictions of speech within a “limited forum.”[14] But this is only when the restriction is “content based.”[15] On first appearance, the restriction at hand would appear to be content-based, since it disallows just the word itself. However, there is no indication that this was an application of uniform policy. In fact, evidence shows the opposite. An organization at the College of Law, Across the Aisle, has previously advertised a “neutral” discussion of abortion in 2022 to the entire College of Law student population, seemingly without issue.[16] This uneven application of the policy suggests that this is a restriction based on viewpoint, which is not permissible under the First Amendment.[17]

While we hope that a commonplace medical term like abortion should not be construed as inflammatory or disruptive, as law students, we are all aware that it is a politically charged term. The College of Law’s decision to impermissibly censor the word “abortion”—albeit briefly—marks its bow to the anticipated pressure and scrutiny looming over the state and country following an upheaval in political balance and a hard shift toward right-wing ideology.

Federal Funding, Iowa Legislature, and Women’s Healthcare Research – All on the Chopping Block

The College of Law, and the University of Iowa as a whole, are both capitulating to Iowa legislators by restricting the use of the word “abortion.” Women’s health care and associated research is under attack by the 2025 Trump Administration. The effects of these attacks are exacerbated by the Iowa Legislature’s complicity. The federal and state governments’ most recent attacks on higher education include the reduction in federal funding, elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”), and push for anti-choice legislation.[18]

Large research universities, including the University of Iowa, receive a majority of their research funding from federal grants. The National Science Foundation (“NSF”) is the main distributor of research funding to universities. However, in the wake of Trump’s broad abolition of DEI and slashed federal funding, many vital research topics are at risk. 

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation issued a report on the “politicization of science” through NSF funding.[19] Currently, grants are being scanned for a long list of words, including “woman,” “women,” “black women” and “people of color.”[20] Grant applications including any of the flagged terms could be canceled, archived, or modified from their original proposal.[21] This will cause a reduction in research for countless, already understudied topics, including reproductive care. 

Concerns over federal funding cuts are not new for higher education.[22] Recent declarations from the Trump Administration for federal funding cuts, anti-trans executive orders, and DEI elimination have only heightened present concerns for public universities. The reality is that now women’s health, individuals with the capacity for pregnancy, and access to reproductive healthcare are all negatively associated with the “woke left.” 

The Iowa Legislature, with its current Republican majority[23], will unsurprisingly follow this trend when funding grants and research at the University of Iowa. Most likely, the University of Iowa—including the College of Law—is reading the writing on the wall. By preemptively wilting under the pretenses of proposed DEI elimination, the University of Iowa is trying to stay in good graces with the Iowa Legislature.[24]

Suppressing Talk of Abortion Will Compound Poor Maternal Health in Iowa 

The pressure the College of Law feels to censor the word “abortion” is no doubt in response to the state’s turn toward suppressing pro-choice legislation and access to reproductive care. After the Supreme Court overruled Roe and Casey, eliminating the federal right to abortion, Iowa instituted stricter abortion laws that now ban abortion after six weeks.[25] Iowa’s abortion laws discipline healthcare providers if they do not follow the regulations set forth in the legislature’s abortion statutes.[26] These new laws have caused extreme unrest, fear, and concern among the healthcare employees in Iowa. Many OB-GYN providers are choosing to leave Iowa to practice in states with less restrictive laws where they do not fear being punished for providing basic care for their patients.[27] 

This could spell disaster for pregnant persons in Iowa, as Iowa already struggles to provide adequate maternal healthcare. Iowa has the lowest per capita rate of OB-GYN providers to Medicare beneficiaries in the nation.[28] Additionally, approximately one-third of Iowa’s counties are considered maternal care deserts, meaning they lack OB-GYNs and birthing hospitals or centers.[29] Inadequate care caused by providers leaving Iowa has resulted in increased maternal mortality.[30] Iowa’s current abortions laws have pushed out providers, which has led to detrimental impacts to maternal care. This effect will only be exacerbated if we continue to stigmatize even the mere mention of one form of maternal care, an abortion.

The actions of the College of Law—however backtracked—signal to the student body that basic reproductive healthcare is “too sensitive” to talk about in a legal setting, reinforcing the harmful stereotype that people who have abortions should be silenced. Following the College of Law’s initial logic, the fact it could make someone uncomfortable is reason enough for them to hide the word. Censoring words that could make people uncomfortable is not a common theme in law school environments. Sensitive topics, such as rape, sexual assault, incest, and suicide are routinely covered in a variety of law school courses. If students are expected to act professionally when discussing such topics in class, why is it asking too much of them to walk by a poster with “abortion” on it in the hallway? Sure, this move is a preemptive bid for survival in the face of a state legislature hell-bent on controlling institutions of higher education.[31] But we bet that students would be more comforted knowing that the institution they have put their money, years, and tears toward is going to protect their constitutional rights without being prompted to do so.