Iowa Poll: 71% want state to resume paying Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services

Copyright Des Moines Register & Tribune Co. 2018

Most Iowans want the state to resume giving money to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows.

Seventy-one percent of Iowa adults support restoring the money, compared to 25 percent who oppose it and 4 percent who are unsure.

The Legislature voted last April to exclude any agency that provides abortion from participating in the state’s family planning program, which covers birth control services to moderate-income Iowans. The move targeted Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which lost $2 million in annual Medicaid money and wound up closing four clinics around the state.

Proponents of last year’s change contended any public financing of Planned Parenthood effectively supports abortion by helping pay for the private agency’s clinics. Critics of the change say it has crimped Iowans’ access to family-planning services, which can prevent unintended pregnancies and the abortions to which such pregnancies often lead.

The defunding bill was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by then-Gov. Terry Branstad, who is a Republican. But the new Iowa Poll finds that even among Iowa Republicans, 50 percent support restoring the Planned Parenthood money and 48 percent oppose doing so. Ninety percent of Democrats and 74 percent of political independents support restoring the money.

The new Iowa Poll also asked whether Iowans want the state to define life as beginning at conception. Abortion opponents have long sought such a definition, believing it would lead to stricter bans on the procedure. The poll shows 55 percent of Iowans support such a definition, 34 percent oppose it and 11 percent say they’re unsure.

The poll, conducted by Selzer and Co. of Des Moines, questioned 801 Iowa adults Jan. 28-31 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

More Iowa Poll stories:

Donald Trump's approval rating rises, but he remains underwater

Kim Reynolds leads all Democratic challengers in 2018 race for governor

Most want bottle bill kept or expanded

Iowans divided on views of state's economic development incentives

Strong majority support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants

Poll participant JoAnn Szuch of Ankeny agrees with the life-at-conception definition and opposes giving Planned Parenthood any public money. She believes any support of the private agency ultimately helps promote abortion. “I’m a born-again Christian and I think it’s murder,” she said. “I think we’ll have blood on our hands for all the innocent lives that have been lost. … I know what the Bible says, and I know what God says: It’s wrong.”

Szuch, 61, is a Republican and a homemaker. She considers the effort to end abortion to be more important than any other issue.

Poll participant Rosan Walters of Albion has mixed feelings about abortion. “I feel if it’s done in the first 12 weeks, it’s OK. After that, I guess I’m uncomfortable,” she said. But she doesn’t want to limit legal abortion to the point that women resume facing the danger of illegal “back-alley” abortions.

Walters, 54, supports restoring public funding to Planned Parenthood because she thinks the agency provides important health-care services, especially for young women. She believes easily accessible birth-control services make unintended pregnancies less likely, reducing the number of potential abortions.

Walters, who is a Democrat and receives a disability income, answered “yes” when asked in the poll whether she favors having the state define life as beginning at conception. But in a subsequent interview, she said the question was difficult to answer. She doesn’t know exactly at what point in a pregnancy she would define life, she said, “and I don’t know if the state should do the defining.”

She was not alone in those feelings: Sixty-one percent of Iowans who want the state to define life at conception also want the state to restore Planned Parenthood funds for non-abortion services, according to the poll.

Poll participant Shabana Gupta of Grimes answered “no” in the poll when asked if the state should define life as beginning at conception. Like Walters, she said it’s hard to say exactly where the line is. “Until we can see clear indication of brain activity, I don’t think we should be able to say it’s a child,” she said.

Gupta, 18, is a Democrat and a senior at Johnston High School. She said the state should restore family planning money to Planned Parenthood. Even abortion opponents should support doing so, she said.

“I think a lot of people don’t understand that if you cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, you don’t just cut it off for abortion,” she said. She added that she believes Planned Parenthood supporters are correct that by limiting Iowans’ access to birth control services, the cuts could lead to more unintended pregnancies and more abortions.

The state had to forego $3 million in federal Medicaid matching money after the change, because federal rules don’t disqualify agencies from federal family planning money just because the agencies also offer abortions. The change also meant UnityPoint and University of Iowa clinics no longer qualify for Iowa’s family planning program, because hospitals in those systems sometimes provide abortions in cases of serious fetal anomalies or to protect the mother’s life.

An Iowa Poll taken in February 2017, when legislators were considering the proposed change, found that 77 percent of Iowans wanted the state to continue financing non-abortion services at Planned Parenthood, with 18 percent saying such financing should not continue and 5 percent saying they were unsure.

Supporters of last spring’s defunding bill predicted that plenty of other clinics could step in and provide family planning services. However, the Associated Press recently reported that the number of Iowans enrolled in the new family planning program was almost 50 percent less than the number enrolled in the previous program.

Last year’s vote by the Legislature affected only patients who applied for the special family planning program, which covers many moderate-income Iowans. The change did not affect services provided to patients who belong to the main Medicaid program, which mainly serves poor people. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland expects to collect several hundred thousand dollars from Iowa’s Medicaid program this fiscal year for non-abortion services, including birth control, provided to members of the main Medicaid program.

The new poll comes as legislators are once again debating issues related to abortion. This week, a Senate subcommittee heard emotional testimony about a bill that would bar abortions after a fetal heartbeat could be detected. Opponents say the bill would effectively outlaw any abortion after six weeks of gestation and would be ruled an unconstitutional violation of women’s right to health care. Supporters say it would protect human life.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland President Suzanna de Baca was pleased to hear about the Iowa Poll’s findings that most Iowans support restoring state family-planning money to her agency. “It validates what we know and what we hear,” she said.

De Baca referred to the recent Associated Press report that the state’s new family-planning program is serving little more than half as many people as the old one, which included Planned Parenthood clinics. That probably will lead to more unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, she said.

De Baca said she doesn’t know of any concrete attempt in the Legislature to restore the old family planning program, but she hopes it will happen eventually.

She said the poll results on the life-at-conception question show that people wrestle with the issue. However, she said, “that really doesn’t get to the question of whether they think abortion should be legal or not.”

Abortion opponents applauded the poll’s findings on the life-at-conception question. “We are pleased that a majority of Iowans recognize what the science affirms: That from the moment of fertilization, a baby has her own, unique DNA and is her own, unique person,” Drew Zahn, director of communications for the conservative group the Family Leader, wrote in an email. “Increasingly, Iowans realize that the little girl in her mother’s womb — she’s a baby.”

Maggie deWitte, executive director of the group Iowans for Life, said she believes the state’s new family planning program will wind up providing service to more Iowans than the old one did. She said rural clinics that didn’t participate before should be attracted to the new program. She discounted the recent report about the new program’s smaller enrollment numbers, saying the figures were early estimates. “I say, let’s take a step back and wait until we get more data,” deWitte said.

The Catholic Church has long been one of the leading forces opposing abortion and Planned Parenthood, but the Iowa Poll suggests not all Iowa Catholics agree. The poll found that 65 percent of Catholics think the state should define life as beginning at conception, compared to 62 percent of Protestants and 30 percent of people who do not belong to a religion. The poll found that 68 percent of Iowa Catholics think the state should restore money for Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion services, compared to 66 percent of Iowa Protestants and 90 percent of Iowans who do not belong to a religion.

About the poll

The Iowa Poll, conducted Jan. 28-31 for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on telephone interviews with 801 Iowans ages 18 or older. Interviewers with Quantel Research contacted households with randomly selected landline and cell phone numbers supplied by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were administered in English. Responses were adjusted by age and sex to reflect the general population based on recent census data.

Questions based on the sample of 801 Iowa adults have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. This means that if this survey were repeated using the same questions and the same methodology, 19 times out of 20, the findings would not vary from the true population value by more than plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Results based on smaller samples of respondents — such as by gender or age — have a larger margin of error.

Republishing the copyright Iowa Poll without credit to The Des Moines Register and Mediacom is prohibited.