Cafe Flora is a true breakfast and lunch hidden gem, unless you work in the Reflections IV office park just off South Lynnhaven Road.

Here, tucked in the tidy, tiny space on the first floor of one of the buildings that make up the complex is the family-run restaurant that mostly serves office workers. But don’t let that stop you from a visit when you are in the area.

The menu is expansive, and there were many things that caught my attention.

I came for lunch, but noted the breakfast menu, including bagels, omelets, plates with eggs and meats, sandwiches and more. I’m planning on coming back to try some of those out.

The lunch bill of fare is varied with a number of salads and an assortment of soups. There’s a focus on sandwiches including barbecue, burgers, housemade chicken, egg, or tuna salad, paninis, a Reuben, and tuna melt. In all, there’s more than a dozen sandwiches, all crafted in-house.

But I’m always on the lookout for something unique, and tucked in the corner of the menu are a number of items with a nod to the owner’s Korean heritage.

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The eat: Bibimbap, $9.99

Bibimbap is a versatile Korean dish. The name translates to “mixed rice,” which makes it highly customizable. Always present is the rice, but there’s usually a mix of vegetables present, typically strategically placed by colors and cuts to complement each other.

Meat is another component you will often see, usually beef. The dish is often spiced up with a chile paste or sauce, and you are likely to see a fried egg on top.

The bibimbap at Cafe Flora fits those guidelines. Here a generous serving of rice is served with chopped, well-seasoned beef. Around the perimeter are a number of vegetables, among them bean sprouts, carrot, lettuce, mushroom, and spinach. An unusual addition is gosali, which is akin to fiddlehead ferns. An egg crowns it all.

Note: You do not pick around the plate and eat each component individually. Use your chopstick and mix it up, so that a little bit of everything is enjoyed in each bite. Also, in this way, the egg yolk becomes a rich sauce of its own.

Speaking of sauces, the housemade sriracha sauce is truly something special. Savory, spicy, and sweet, it’s highly addictive. I’d like to grab a bottle and use it in bloody marys at home.

There’s three sushi rolls available too, including Kimbap, Spicy Crab Roll, and California Roll, all priced at $8.99. We ordered a California Roll to share as an appetizer. This was a fresh rendition of the classic, with artificial crab, avocado, and cucumber wrapped in nori and enrobed in sushi rice. It’s delicious. Served alongside was seaweed salad, pickled ginge, and wasabi soy sauce.

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The drink: Water

There’s no beer, spirits or wine at Cafe Flora, nor would I expect there to be.

Instead there’s a soda machine and a cooler with grab-and-go colas, juices, other soft drinks, and water.

The restaurant is open weekdays from 7:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.

Cafe Flora is in the Reflections IV office park at 200 Golden Oak Court, Virginia Beach. Call 757-340-3249.

Patrick Evans-Hylton, [email protected]

YORK — Until 2021, Springfield Road was a quiet country lane tucked in the woods of York County. Late that year, work began on a 213-home, age-restricted community called Tranquility, transforming the dead-end street into a thoroughfare for commercial and private vehicles.

Residents of Springfield Road and community members advocating on their behalf are now pleading with York County officials to alleviate what they say is a constant stream of construction traffic — a stream that will last for years of the development’s buildout — on a street that’s largely home to elderly and working-class people.

Many of them hope that an ongoing study of an alternative access — one that itself would require significant effort to come to fruition — will show that Springfield Road can be bypassed altogether for the remainder of the construction.

County officials say their hands are tied, and that developer Tranquility Residential, site contractor Henderson, Inc. and homebuilder Ryan Homes have a legal right to use Springfield Road. There are no other practical options.

Henderson has taken measures to soften the effects of contractors’ use of the road, remains engaged in ongoing dialogue with Springfield Road residents and is looking for ways to relieve issues that arise.

Once the development is complete, which the original developer said might take five or six years in phases, Springfield Road will no longer be used for access, and residential traffic will exclusively use a different private road running through an adjacent timeshare community.

Development finds community again

The area encompassing Springfield Road was once known as Jones Point and was a rural enclave of displaced Black families who had lost their homes when the U.S. government commandeered tens of thousands of acres for what would become the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station and Camp Peary in the first half of the 20th century.

For decades, Jones Point was off the beaten path. But development crept closer to this corner of York County over the years. Water Country USA was built to the south in the mid-1980s, and King’s Creek Plantation, a timeshare resort, put development on Springfield Road’s doorstep around 2007.

One of the large properties to the northeast of Springfield Road is the former Commonwealth of Virginia Emergency Fuel Storage Facility, a site abandoned for decades but that the Eastern Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority is now transforming into an industrial park and solar farm.

There is also an 83.7-acre parcel to the east of Springfield Road that is zoned for economic opportunity and that county officials approved in 1997 for additional units in King’s Creek Plantation. But the timeshare resort let its option on that property lapse, and the parcel was open again for new proposals.

In 2018, Lamont Myers, president of Mid-Atlantic Land Management LLC, appeared before York County officials with a plan to build a community for people aged 55 and older. It would develop a parcel already approved for such an endeavor, providing upward of $500,000 in annual revenue to the county while avoiding the sort of industrial enterprises that might cause issues with the adjacent residential communities.

But a major concern was construction access. The only public road into and out of the parcel is Springfield Road, and its condition wasn’t great.

A 2018 York County Planning Division staff report described Springfield Road, which it said was between 10 and 13 feet wide, as “an older, substandard road serving 12 to 13 residential properties.” The road was crumbling in many places and not wide enough for large vehicles to pass one another.

Tranquility Drive, a much newer and wider road that ties into the new development from the south, is a private street maintained by the timeshare resort. In 2018, King’s Creek Plantation managing partner Kevin Jones threw the resort’s support behind the Tranquility development based on three conditions, among them that all construction vehicles access the site through Springfield Drive. Residential vehicles — estimated to be 770 vehicle trips per day once the development is complete — will exclusively access Tranquility through the timeshare resort once residents move in.

In February 2018, the application for the rezoning needed for the Tranquility development went before the York County Planning Commission. The evening of the meeting, two planning commissioners were absent, and one recused himself from the vote because of a potential conflict of interest. With four planning commissioners voting, the application failed to gain Planning Commission approval — which is an advisory and not a binding vote — with a 2-2 tie.

Montee Jons was chairman of the Planning Commission at the time and cast one of the no votes. He said that while on paper the development looked like a good fit for that parcel, routing all the construction traffic onto Springfield Road was a dealbreaker. Jons is now an officer with the Conserve York County Foundation, an organization that advocates for responsible development in the jurisdiction’s rural areas.

Not only was Springfield Road substandard, he said, but the optics were not good. Jons said he was not comfortable with the timeshare resort being OK with high volumes of residential traffic permanently on its private road while routing all the construction traffic through a less-visible and less-well-off neighborhood.

“These are plain people — the elderly and people who work on their feet all day,” he said. “These are poor people and people of color.”

The volume of traffic on Springfield Road again came up when the Tranquility application went before the York County Board of Supervisors in March 2018.

Myers said the road, which he measured at 14 feet wide, would encounter a limited amount of traffic on any given workday. Myers deferred to the expertise of Mid-Atlantic Land Management’s traffic consultant, Chris Lawrence, who framed the traffic issue as a question of numbers.

“Do we put construction access through Tranquility and through the timeshare property, or do we do it on Springfield? So, it’s about a dozen homes versus 460 timeshares,” Lawrence said at the public hearing.

“We discussed construction traffic with the builders, and our best estimation is that we’re going to have roughly 20 construction vehicles on a typical day,” he said.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve the application.

Big trucks on a narrow road

Chairman Thomas Shepperd, who voiced strong concerns in the public hearing about the traffic impact on Springfield Road, said that the number quoted by the traffic consultant had little bearing on his vote.

“The issue of 20 (vehicles) … was not in my calculation, my consideration,” he said. “No one knows that answer, and to throw out a number like that to me didn’t make any sense at all.”

Shepperd said the vote instead reflected the board’s inability to force a private road owner to allow access.

“All of a sudden, (residents of Springfield Road) have logging trucks, etc., and it’s a mess,” he said. “No one would want to have it happen on their street, but you run into a legal issue. What are your options?”

A limit on the number of vehicles on Springfield Road was not in the final ordinance approved by the board, but it did include a couple stipulations, namely that construction activities be conducted only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. and that the developer post a surety to return Springfield Road to its original or a better condition than it was before Tranquility’s construction.

Construction on Tranquility did not begin until 2021. By then, the original parties involved in the approval process had moved on. Myers’ Mid-Atlantic Land Management had sold its stake in the development. King’s Creek — which dropped the word “Plantation” from its name but still retains it in its URL — was bought by Spinnaker Resorts.

A spokeswoman for Spinnaker Resorts declined requests to comment.

Current site contractor Henderson Inc. purchased the development in the summer of 2021. Since then, according to civil preconstruction manager Peter Henderson, the firm has been working to mitigate the inconveniences for Springfield Road residents.

“We have added pull-off areas to help with passing traffic, and we have put signage up to remind contractors to be respectful of the neighbors,” he said. “We have also set up an email and phone line for the residents to communicate any concerns that arise so we can attempt to address and remedy what we can and what we have control over.”

Henderson said that on a typical day, Springfield Road encounters roughly 40 work vehicles that are contractors’ means of transportation to work, along with 15 or so larger trucks delivering materials to the job site. Henderson said it’s impossible to know now how long construction will take.

Springfield Road resident Josh Mullins, however, said the volume of daily traffic is in the triple digits. On June 8, with a camera he has on his property, Mullins said he counted 240 vehicle trips, or roughly 120 individual vehicles of different sizes, going into and out of Tranquility via Springfield Road.

For Mullins, the volume of traffic is not the only issue. The traffic creates noise and dust in the 12-hour window when it’s permitted. Especially worrisome is the narrow width of the road, which is frequently occupied with large trucks. In the event of an emergency, according to Mullins, EMS might not be able to arrive in time.

York County  Supervisor Walter Zaremba voted to approve the application for Tranquility but said he is not happy with the way things have turned out.

“The current use of Springfield Road is not a winning solution,” Zaremba said. “There is no reason for us to abuse the citizens who live on Springfield.”

No help coming soon

Zaremba said it is worth considering an alternative suggested by community activists, among them Doug Holroyd, who is running for the seat that Zaremba will vacate later this year.

According to Holroyd, it might be possible to access Tranquility via a road to the north of the property, Hawks Nest Drive. The biggest issue would be a ravine the road would have to cross to get to the construction site.

County Administrator Neil Morgan commissioned a feasibility study by AH Engineering Consultants to look into using Hawks Nest Drive. But Morgan said that he suspects there will be obstacles that would make such a road impractical.

For starters, Morgan said, there will be several agencies, among them the Virginia Department of Transportation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers if the proposed path contains wetlands, that will add numerous layers of regulatory red tape, meaning that completion of a road would be years down the road — likely as construction on Tranquility is wrapping up.

What’s more, according to Morgan, the cost of a proposed road would run into the millions, a price tag that many taxpayers would find unpalatable.

“To me, if the county was prepared to make that type of investment, which wouldn’t be easy, I think that a smarter thing to do would be to upgrade Springfield Road for the long term,” he said.

Shepperd agrees that a better approach would be to invest that money in Springfield Road, perhaps enhancing the infrastructure, and providing sewer and water to residents, who now use septic systems.

Holroyd said that not only is Springfield Road inadequate to handle construction traffic for five years, but also that county officials should have solicited more input from Springfield Road residents prior to the vote. He said that two were directly notified of the coming changes.

This episode shows the need for better planning, Holroyd said.

“They stopped at Springfield Road because it had all they needed,” he said.

County officials say that they recognize it’s a lousy situation for the people who live along Springfield Road, but that legally other options aren’t realistic and that the inconvenience is temporary.

Morgan said that the developer is taking strides to be a good partner. “They are making efforts to minimize the problem. What they’re not going to do is give up their lawful right to develop the property,” he said.

But for Mullins, the traffic that passes in front of his house has left him dejected and inspired to spread a message of political involvement.

“The damage is already done,” Mullins said. “We just want to keep this from happening to anyone else.”

Ben Swenson, [email protected]

I wrote my first op-ed in The Virginia Gazette back in June 2020. In addition to the pandemic, there was also a racial reckoning taking place following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Tensions were high, and it was as if a Band-Aid had been ripped off an old wound — one that never fully healed to begin with. Many of us in the Williamsburg community wanted to do something, but we didn’t know where to begin. Two of my neighbors approached me about starting a local Be the Bridge group, a nonprofit organization focused on racial reconciliation from a biblical standpoint. We advertised our plan and gauged community interest. When it was all said and done, our group consisted of four Black women, four white women and one biracial woman.

Over the course of 10 weeks, we used our study guide and let it take us on a journey that was both intimate and sacred. Together, we talked openly and honestly about the history of this country. We discussed some of the most painful chapters of American history, the triumphs weaved throughout, and how our past still affects our present. The conversations were almost never easy, as we each had different perspectives and experiences that brought us to this shared moment. However, we were all committed to making a difference in our community — one conversation at a time. We laughed, we cried and we lamented. Women from different places, on opposite sides of the aisle, and spanning several generations came together to have difficult conversations. We will forever be bonded by the summer of 2020, when we set aside our differences and really listened to one another.

Facing the truth and listening to the perspectives of those who are different from us is not an easy thing to do. It certainly wasn’t easy for my Be the Bridge group. But it is the necessary thing for all of us to do if we want to move forward as a country instead of moving backward. Slavery existed in America, just as it has in many other countries around the world — this is a matter of fact. It was gruesome and inhumane, and it all started right here in the Historic Triangle. While it is a shameful truth, it is one that we should not shield our children from.

Instead of banning books and altering the history curriculums in our public schools, we should focus on teaching our kids how resilient this country is. Just because we acknowledge the reality and shame of American slavery, doesn’t mean we have to sit in that shame. Making our children aware of some of the darkest chapters of American history does not mean that the story ends there. It is still unfolding, and our kids have the power to write the next chapter. By exposing them to all parts of U.S. history, we can actually show our children that even in the midst of hate and bigotry, our country can continue to overcome. In addition, we can encourage them to become change-makers and stand up for what’s right. Using the past as an example, we can learn from previous mistakes and improve upon them for everyone’s benefit. When we give kids the opportunity to learn and develop their own opinions, we empower them.

My family and I recently attended the local Juneteenth celebrations around our community. Watching people from various backgrounds and varying complexions laugh, cry and celebrate reminded me that we can work together to actually pursue a more perfect union for us all. I was even more convinced that when we come together to acknowledge what was, we can collectively move forward to change what is and what will be. In order to not repeat history, we must confront it head on, and that starts with telling the truth.

Over 200 years ago, our Founding Fathers penned these words in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Even though they set out to create a more perfect union, as a country, we can acknowledge that the Founding Fathers did not include Black people or even women in their words. President Abraham Lincoln took a bold step forward by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and setting our country on a path to true freedom for all of its citizens. And just as Lincoln had the courage to do what was right in the face of adversity, we as Americans have an obligation to do the same.

History has its eyes on us, and we have a chance to set the record straight. Ultimately, our kids will want to know what we did or what we said to better our nation when we had the opportunity. In addition to telling them the truth, be a role model for them and show them how acknowledging our past can be the first step in combating inequality. In the words of famous American writer and activist James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Dr. Jade L. Ranger is a pharmacist at The Prescription Shoppe, a full-service pharmacy which she owns with her husband. She is mom to two boys, ages 5 and 9, and recently published her first book, “Mustard Seed Mentality,” available at Amazon.com.

By COLLEEN SLEVIN (Associated Press)

DENVER (AP) — A black bear attacked a sheepherder in the Colorado mountains, leaving the 35-year-old man severely injured with bites to his head and other wounds, wildlife officials said. The bear suspected of attacking him was later killed.

The attack, the first reported in Colorado this year, happened early Tuesday in the Weiminuche Wilderness in the San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado, the state Parks and Wildlife department said in a news release.

The man awoke to a disturbance between the bear and his sheep at about 1 a.m. and fired a rifle at the bear before being attacked, the agency said. The man was bitten on the head and had wounds to an arm and hand, officials said.

After managing to return to his tent and contact his cousin, he was airlifted to one hospital and then another for surgery, it said. He was released on Wednesday.

He worked for a rancher who had a permit to allow sheep to graze in the remote area, the agency said, a common summer practice with livestock.

State wildlife officials worked with an agent and a team of dogs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service to track the bear. A male bear with chest wounds and weighing about 250 pounds was found and shot Tuesday night, Parks and Wildlife officials said.

“This is a difficult part of the job,” Parks and Wildlife area wildlife manager Adrian Archuleta said in the news release. “But when it comes to injuries to humans as a result of a predator attack, human health and safety is our top priority.”

The bear also killed two sheep and fed on them, Parks and Wildlife spokesperson John Livingston said Friday. Wool was found in its stomach and human DNA was found on its claws, but further testing is needed to confirm that the DNA matches that taken from the human, he said.

The bear tested negative for rabies, Livingston said.

Black bears eat mostly berries and acorns but will attack smaller animals like sheep, goats and chickens if they have an opportunity, he said.

The Gloucester County Sheriff’s Office has charged four men in connection to an “incident” involving guns that put a recent school board meeting on lockdown for two hours.

According to a news release from the sheriff’s office, a deputy was on duty at the meeting, located at the education center that houses a preschool and a day care. The deputy noticed a group of five men enter the meeting together but then disperse among the other attendees. During the meeting, the deputy noticed Trevor Herrin, of Williamsburg, holding a knife in “scout carry” position, which the sheriff’s office says makes it easy to withdraw the knife from the sheath.

“During the meeting Mr. Herrin came to the podium and spoke during the citizen comment period,” the release from the sheriff’s office reads. “The male alleged that his vehicle had been vandalized during the last school board meeting and stated that (he) ‘would strongly recommend caution and reflection before engaging in anything like that, especially with someone you don’t know, with capabilities you don’t know.’”

The sheriff’s office said Herrin told deputies in an interview that he felt attacked by the alleged vandalism, which he said involved someone slashing a tire. Security video was checked by law enforcement in an effort to see any vandalism done to Herrin’s vehicle, according to officers. No evidence of anyone tampering with his vehicle was seen in the video, and Herrin never filed an incident report.

After Herrin spoke, the deputy saw the grip of a gun that had previously been concealed by Herrin’s shirt. The five men, including Herrin, left the meeting, but the deputy approached them in the parking lot. Four of the five men — Herrin, Derek Coblentz, Chris Cordasco and Antonio Hernandez — were carrying concealed firearms on school property, according to the sheriff’s office. The fifth person was not carrying a weapon, and no charges have been filed against him. All of the men except Herrin have concealed carry permits.

All four are charged with carrying a firearm on school property, and Herrin carries an additional charge of unlawful possession of a concealed firearm.

Eliza Noe, [email protected]

By RIO YAMAT (Associated Press)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal jury convicted a Las Vegas police officer Friday on all counts of stealing nearly $165,000 during a trio of casino heists, including one where he was armed with a department-issued weapon that was loaded.

Caleb Rogers, 35, faces life in prison upon sentencing because he brandished a revolver during the third casino heist he carried out in February 2022. U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon set his sentencing for October.

The jury reached a verdict after just over three hours of deliberation.

Jurors used common sense to decide the case, Lloyd Dickerson, one of the 12, told The Associated Press.

“Everything kind of added up,” Dickerson said outside the courthouse. “It took all of the evidence and all of the testimony from everybody to come to this conclusion.”

Seated next to his attorney, Rogers showed no emotion as the verdict was read in the courtroom. Richard Pocker told AP they planned to appeal the conviction.

Rogers, who was employed as an active-duty patrol officer at the time of the heists, has been on unpaid leave without police powers since his arrest. A spokesperson for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said after the verdict that Rogers’ future at the department “will be determined at the conclusion” of an internal investigation. The department said it had no comment on Rogers’ conviction.

The case went to the jury Thursday shortly after Rogers’ younger brother testified against him for more than three hours, painting a clear picture for the jurors of how the two successfully pulled off the first heist in the series. Josiah Rogers said he participated only in that robbery. Caleb Rogers carried out the other two heists alone, prosecutors said.

Throughout the weeklong trial, prosecutors had portrayed Rogers as a gambling addict who had grown increasingly desperate under a crush of debt when the robberies targeting casinos off the Las Vegas Strip began. They said he had a unique set of skills and knowledge about robberies as a law enforcement officer and used that to his advantage.

Jurors also heard from casino employees who said they are still haunted by their encounters with the robber. A security guard wrestled with the suspect for his loaded weapon during one of the heists. He said he couldn’t stop thinking about how he might not have made it home to his family that day. And a 63-year-old cashier said she still looks over her shoulder when she handles cash at work.

Assistant U.S. attorney David Kiebler said in his closing argument Thursday that the evidence in all three robberies pointed to the same man: Caleb Rogers.

But Pocker, the officer’s lawyer, called the bulk of the government’s evidence circumstantial and convenient for a police department that already had been trying for months — to no avail — to solve the other robberies when Rogers was arrested.

“They tried too hard here,” Pocker said in his closing argument. “It’s just too coincidental.”

Rogers’ trial came to a head Thursday when his brother took the stand.

Josiah Rogers was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. Jurors scribbled notes and darted glances between the brothers as Josiah Rogers recounted the details. He said they rehearsed for their casino heist in November 2021. They used code words in an encrypted messaging app to communicate, he said. They returned home to their shared apartment after successfully robbing the Red Rock Casino’s cashier cage and spread the money across their dining table, counting out $73,810.

Josiah Rogers said he took his $30,000 cut and moved back to their hometown of Columbus, Ohio, a week after the robbery.

Before he took the stand, the government’s evidence had been mostly focused on the third robbery in February 2022, when Caleb Rogers was arrested outside the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.

Prosecutors said Caleb Rogers stormed that casino’s sportsbook, shoved a cashier in her 60s out of his way, and threatened to use a gun while he shoveled $79,000 into a drawstring bag hidden inside his jacket. Within minutes, prosecutors said, the robber was tackled by a group of security guards outside the casino, sending a wig he’d been wearing flying off his head.

Police lapel video played during the trial showed Caleb Rogers identifying himself as a police officer as he was folded into the back of a patrol car outside the casino.

Casino heists are hard to pull off, said Mehmet Erdem, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose expertise includes hotel and casino operations.

“The chances you get caught and are identified is very high,” he said, because of a combination of robust casino security teams with uniformed guards and plainclothes officers and advancements in security technology, including facial recognition software and high-definition cameras.

By HANNAH FINGERHUT and SUMMER BALLENTINE (Associated Press)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa ban on most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy was signed into law Friday, forcing clinics to scramble to arrange out-of-state care for many women whose access immediately ended as a judge considered whether to temporarily put a hold on the law.

A court hearing took place Friday, but the judge said his ruling on whether to halt the new law as the courts assess its constitutionality will likely not come until Monday at the earliest.

Barely a mile away, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the measure into law in front of 2,000 conservative Christians.

The new legislation prohibits almost all abortions once cardiac activity can be detected, which is usually around six weeks of pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant. That’s a dramatic shift for women in Iowa, where abortion had been legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The ACLU of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic filed the legal challenge Wednesday and representatives spoke at the court hearing Friday.

After the hearing, District Court Judge Joseph Seidlin said he could not imagine “anything that would be more insulting to either side” than for him to “flippantly” rule from the bench Friday.

The split screen between Reynolds’ signing and the court hearing punctuates a bitter battle between abortion advocates and opponents in Iowa that has dragged on for years and will likely, for now, remain unresolved.

“As we gather here today, at this very moment, the abortion industry is in the court trying to prevent this law from taking effect and stop once again the will of the people,” Reynolds said, before bringing lawmakers and others to the stage to sign the law. “But the passage of this legislation by even a wider margin this times sends an unmistakable message.”

The bill passed with exclusively Republican support late on Tuesday at the conclusion of a rare, 14-hour special legislative session.

The new measure will be considered in the context of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and Iowa’s Supreme Court last year, when both reversed themselves on rulings that had affirmed a woman’s fundamental constitutional right to abortion.

Those decisions prompted Reynolds to ask the court to reinstate her blocked 2018 law, which is nearly identical to the new one. The state’s high court deadlocked last month, prompting Reynolds to call lawmakers back to the Iowa Capitol.

“Patients’ lives are deeply impacted every day that this law is allowed to stand,” said Ruth Richardson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States. “Iowans will be harmed as they’ve lost the right to control their bodies and futures.”

Planned Parenthood North Central States were helping patients reschedule their appointments in other states, if they wanted, but remained hopeful there would not be a long interruption in services. Richardson said there have been hundreds of phone calls to prepare patients amid the uncertainty.

As of Wednesday, 200 patients were scheduled for abortions at Iowa Planned Parenthood clinics or the Emma Goldman Clinic this week and next, according to the court filings. Most of them already passed the six-week mark in their pregnancies.

One clinic stayed open until about 9:30 p.m. Thursday in an effort to provide abortion care to as many patients as possible before the new restrictions, their attorney said.

“I can only hope that all patients who had appointments this morning have gotten the care that they need and that they’re not sitting at a health center right now,” the clinics’ attorney Peter Im said during Friday’s court arguments.

There are limited circumstances under the measure that would allow for abortion after the point in a pregnancy where cardiac activity is detected: rape, if reported to law enforcement or a health provider within 45 days; incest, if reported within 145 days; if the fetus has a fetal abnormality “incompatible with life”; or if the pregnancy is endangering the life of the pregnant woman.

Most Republican-led states have drastically limited abortion access in the year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and handed authority on abortion law to the states. More than a dozen states have bans with limited exceptions and one state, Georgia, bans abortion after cardiac activity is detected. Several other states have similar restrictions that are on hold pending court rulings.

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Ballentine contributed from Columbia, Missouri.

Coby Mayo hit a two-run double to highlight a seven-run seventh inning and finished with three RBIs in his Triple-A debut, leading the Norfolk Tides to an 11-3 rout of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders before 6,873 fans Friday night at Harbor Park.

The Tides (56-30, 8-4 in second half) returned from a four-day break by scoring three runs in the first inning, then responding in a big way after the RailRiders (41-44, 7-4) tied it at 3 in the top of the seventh inning.

Connor Norby led off the bottom of the first with his 12th homer of the season, and the next four Tides also reached base. After Heston Kjerstad got hit by a pitch, Joey Ortiz singled and Kyle Stowers walked to load the bases for Mayo, who drew a walk to drive in a run in his first Triple-A at-bat and make it 2-0. Cesar Prieto followed with a run-scoring groundout to cap the first-inning burst.

First at bat out of the break, @norby_connor blasts his 12th home run of the season!#RisingTide pic.twitter.com/b5mZOQrTdR

— Norfolk Tides (@NorfolkTides) July 14, 2023

Meanwhile, left-hander Drew Rom started for the Tides and tossed a scoreless inning with two strikeouts. Justin Armbruester replaced him and pitched three hitless innings to keep Scranton/Wilkes-Barre blanked.

The RailRiders trimmed their deficit to 3-2 in the top of the sixth on Carlos Narvaez’s two-run homer off Tides reliever Noah Denoyer and tied it on Jesus Bastidas’ solo shot off Wandisson Charles in the top of the seventh.

Charles (1-0) picked up the victory thanks to Norfolk’s seven-run barrage in the bottom of the seventh.

With one out, Maverick Handley walked and Norby singled. Kjerstad followed with an RBI single to center and Ortiz then hit an RBI double to right to make it 5-3. After Stowers struck out, Mayo doubled on a sharp liner to left for his first Triple-A hit to score Kjerstad and Ortiz and make it 7-3.

The Tides EXPLODE for seven runs in the 7th, including @cobymayox‘s first Triple-A hit! It was a two-run double.

Norfolk up 10-3 into the 8th.#RisingTide pic.twitter.com/upZQKERF7r

— Norfolk Tides (@NorfolkTides) July 15, 2023

Prieto followed with an RBI double to right to score Mayo, Ryan McKenna walked and Josh Lester — batting for the second time in the inning — hit an RBI single to right to make it 9-3. Norby capped the inning with a bases-loaded walk.

RailRiders reliever Aaron McGarity (4-2) took the loss, allowing four runs on three hits in two-thirds of an inning.

Joey Krehbiel pitched a scoreless eighth inning and Easton Lucas followed with a perfect night to close it out for Norfolk.

Ortiz finished with three hits and Norby had two for the Tides, who had nine hits and walked eight times.

The three-game series continues at 6:35 p.m. Saturday for a Fireworks Night game.