The 18-year-old high school student didn’t need to hear the fetal heartbeat. She had heard enough about the challenges of becoming a teen mom from her own mother.

She didn’t need to see the sonogram or to be asked again about it. She didn’t need more adoption-promotion literature or warnings of potential psychological downsides to abortions. She was determined to make a better life for herself than her mother had been able to. And after waiting four days for the appointment, she wanted to get on with the abortion.

But on May 5, the long arm of the state of Iowa reached out to block her. On that day, former Gov. Terry Branstad signed a law, effective immediately, requiring anyone seeking an abortion to wait three more days and make more than two clinic trips to get one. Even though there's already a legally mandated second visit, ultrasound and counseling.

The young woman had unwittingly become a party to the tussle between Iowans' legal right to have abortions and other Iowans' wishes they not have them.

“I don't know what a 72-hour wait is going to do," she told a Planned Parenthood staffer at one of the clinics where women had shown up for appointments May 5. "People are so quick to think that it's a bad thing but it's not. Nobody knows anyone else's story or why they do things.”

She's right. And it's no one else's business anyway. In passing this law, the Republican-dominated legislature and executive made Iowa one of the most restrictive states for abortion. The extra wait offers no medical advantage and is purely coercive, and abortion is the only medical procedure subjected to one.

But in his ruling this week, Polk County Judge Jeffrey Farrell wrote, "The evidence at trial focused on the hardships women face when dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, but the public’s interest in potential life is an interest that cannot be denied under the law. Both of these interests are important."

The law has been on hold since Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa got an injunction May 5. That will continue until an appeal is heard by the Iowa Supreme Court. Their suit argued the new law deprives women of due process and equal protection under Iowa's Constitution. They said it would delay some abortions and prevent others altogether — especially medication abortions — because of the limited time frame in which they must be done.

Planned Parenthood already performs ultrasounds on women seeking abortions. Now those patients will have to return for a repeat of those and a third time to actually get the procedure. Planned Parenthood argues it'll especially burden low-income women (an ultrasound can cost around $270), victims of sexual violence or women whose pregnancies are medically complicated.

Planned Parenthood, which has been forced to close four Iowa clinics because of the state's rejection of federal family planning funds, has said some abortion clients live as many as seven hours away from a clinic. Testifying at the trial as a plaintiff, a doctor said between patients' and doctors' schedules, a 72-hour required wait could mean a one- to two-week delay.

Citing the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey, Farrell wrote that it "fairly balances the two competing interests of a woman’s right to choose an abortion versus the public’s interest in potential life." That court ruled the state could "take measures to ensure that the woman's choice is informed ... as long as their purpose is to persuade the woman to choose childbirth over abortion."

What gives the state the right to tell a woman what to do with her pregnancy? And how is it presumed to have a preference in the matter? Did the public vote? Were they polled?

The lowa law requires the state health department to provide materials to doctors on request that "inform the woman of the benefits of adoption ... and the state's interest in promoting adoption by preferring adoption over abortion."

Sure, people may change their minds but that doesn't give the state license to repeatedly subject them to un-objective, ideologically biased propaganda. It does no mother or child any good to have childbirth forced on anyone. And some of the horrific stories of abuse coming out of Iowa adoptions recently are proof that's not always a panacea.

Read the statements given by abortion-seekers to Planned Parenthood staffers on May 5, and they clearly know what's best for them. One woman said she knows what she can manage career-wise and financially: "I understand that they want you to think about it and not be a rash decision. But for those of us that know, we know that we want this."

A married woman who already has three young children said, "I already had an ultrasound two weeks ago and I already knew the options. I don't need to go through all of this again."

And another woman, who said she got pregnant when a condom broke, spoke of her proud military career. "I can't be pregnant when I go to basic (in a month) ... I made a mistake and I don't want to wait; they could discharge me from the military."

One can only hope the state Supreme Court recognizes the arrogance of this law, through which a small group of hardliners tries to play God with people's lives, and tosses it out.

Rekha Basu is an opinion columnist for The Des Moines Register. Contact: rbasu@dmreg.com Follow her on Twitter @RekhaBasu and at Facebook.com/ColumnistRekha. Her book, "Finding Her Voice: A collection of Des Moines Register columns about women's struggles and triumphs in the Midwest," is available at ShopDMRegister.com/FindingHerVoice