After hours of heated debate, Iowa House Republicans voted Wednesday evening to approve a bill restricting abortions. 

The Des Moines Register reported the passing of the bill Senate File 471 Wednesday, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and create a three-day waiting period for women seeking abortions at any stage of their pregnancy. With a 55-41 vote, House Democrats voted unanimously against the legislation.

The bill currently includes changes that the Iowa Senate will vote on before it reaches Gov. Terry Branstad’s desk. 

The House amended the bill to rid any criminal penalties, however, it would allow the Iowa Board of Medicine to penalize physicians who violate the law. Another amendment would allow doctors to conduct abortions after the 20-week mark if necessary to preserve the mother’s life.

The bill allows no exemptions for rape, incest or pregnancies where genetic complications would make a live birth impossible. 

Republicans believe that the three-day waiting period does not create an undue burden on women seeking abortion. Rather, Rep. Joel Fry, R-Osceola, and chair of the House Human Resources Committee, told the Register that he believes it is a key part of the process.

“We could figure out whatever hours you want to figure out,” Fry said to the Register. “I believe that the key piece of this process is to make sure that we have the time for the decision to be made with all of the facts and have an informed choice being made…”

House Democrats, on the other hand, believe that the bill will restrict the right to choose. 

State Rep. Lisa Heddens, D-Ames, proposed an amendment to the bill Tuesday night, which she inevitably withdrew, to add “equity [when] looking at men’s health and reproductive capabilities.”

Dubbed the “Man’s Right to Know Act,” the purpose of the amendment was to “express the state’s interest in promoting men’s health; ensure that Iowa men experience safe and healthy elective vasectomy and colonoscopy procedures, erectile dysfunction approaches, and men’s health experiences.”

The amendment also included a “masturbatory emission” penalty that would subject men to a $100 penalty for a “male who releases masturbatory emissions outside of a health or medical facility.”

“Such act shall be considered an act against an unborn child and failure to preserve the sanctity of life,” the amendment read.

The funds collected from the penalties, the amendment states, would then be “used by the department of public health for family planning services that replicate those included in the Medicaid family planning network.”

Heddens said she proposed the amendment because of the bills that have been introduced to the Legislature regarding women reproductive health and “what a woman can and cannot do to her body.”

“With the number of pieces of legislation that have been sponsored this year in regards to women’s health and women’s reproductive rights, I’m focusing on equality,” Heddens told Iowa Starting Line.