After years of funding sex education through federal grants, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled last week that the state can keep Planned Parenthood from using government grants for sex education programs. This decision reversed the 2019 ruling that declared prohibiting abortion providers from offering state-sponsored sex education using state funding was unconstitutional.
Six justices agreed that the Iowa Legislature could have reasonable concerns that allowing an abortion provider to teach sex education could undermine its goals of promoting abstinence and reducing teenage pregnancy.
Justices also expressed concern that using abortion providers to deliver sex education programs to teenage students would create relationships between the abortion provider and the students the state does not wish to foster in light of its policy preference for childbirth over abortion.