Iowa law defines child endangerment and sets criminal penalties

The law treats listed acts and failures by adults as child endangerment. These rules cover a child's parent, guardian, caregiver, or household member. They include creating a serious risk, using unreasonable force, withholding necessary care, allowing abuse, abandoning a child known to be unable to care for themself, and knowingly allowing a child near certain illegal drug activity. Some conduct must be knowing or intentional. For neglect, the adult must be reasonably able to provide care, and the lack of care must substantially harm the child. A failure to provide a specific medical treatment is not, by itself, willful neglect when the adult shows that it conflicts with their recognized religious beliefs. A parent or person acting for a parent who releases a newborn under the cited law cannot be prosecuted for abandonment under this provision.

The law treats some contact between a child and a person on the sex offender registry as child endangerment, and sets penalties based on the outcome or conduct. The registry rule concerns registered people with a past sex offense against a child. The penalty rules apply to people convicted of child endangerment. The registry rule covers a person registered for a sex offense against a child who knowingly controls or has unsupervised access to a child. It does not apply when that person is the child's legal parent or guardian, or lives with the child's legal parent or guardian as a spouse, if the contact is otherwise legal. The text assigns a class B felony when endangerment results in a child's death, with confinement of no more than 50 years; a class C felony for serious injury; and a class D felony for bodily injury and specified other conduct. Other endangerment is an aggravated misdemeanor.