Florida GOP Hold Child Healthcare Hostage to Rush 6-Week Abortion Ban
The Florida Legislature is moving with terrifying efficiency to cut off abortion access in one of the last remaining refuges for women seeking care in the South. Florida currently restricts abortion to 15 weeks gestation, but bills being rushed through the Senate and House this week would ban the procedure at six weeks — a proposal that opponents say amounts to a total ban when paired with existing state law.
With a Republican supermajority in both chambers, and an ambitious, attention-hungry governor with designs on the White House, the ban looks poised to sail through both chambers and land on Governor Ron Desantis’ desk as soon as next week.
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Public testimony on Thursday was limited to just 15 seconds per person before it was eliminated together, as the House version of the ban was considered in committee. The reason for the rushed process? Republicans had scheduled a vote on a separate bill — a Democratic priority: expanding access to KidCare, the healthcare program for Florida children — immediately after the hearing on the abortion ban.
Republican Rep. Randy Fine, who chaired Thursday’s hearing, explained to those present: “I’m fine with going to 10:30 [a.m.]… [but] for those who wish to offer more healthcare to children, that bill will die if it’s not heard before 10:30.”
Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat, was appalled. “They call themselves pro-life, but are willing to take away healthcare from kids” over the abortion ban.
Thursday’s rushed hearing stood in stark contrast to the last committee hearing on the Senate version of the ban, which coincided with the lobby day for an influential anti-abortion advocacy organization, the Florida Family Policy Council. Stephanie Loraine Pineiro, executive director of the Florida Access Network, testified at that hearing. “The room was packed with a bunch of anti-abortion volunteers and on that day testimony wasn’t cut short,” Pineiro says. She waited for more than three hours to speak against the legislation.
The impact of a six-week ban in the third most populous state in the country would be devastating — both within the state and beyond its borders. Even before Dobbs, Florida had one of the highest abortion rates in the country. Now, surrounded on all sides by states that have virtually outlawed the practice, access in Florida has become critical to millions of women across the Southeast.
The bill Florida lawmakers are considering is even more onerous than the existing bans in surrounding states, advocates argue, because Florida law currently requires two in-person doctors appointments before a patient can terminate. Because a pregnancy can’t be dated before four weeks, that leaves women who know about their pregnancies, and know they wish to terminate, with a narrow two-week window in which to book the required appointments.
The proposed law also includes a jaw-dropping $25 million in funding for crisis pregnancy centers — unlicensed, often religious organizations that counsel women to keep their pregnancies. As a point of comparison, the legislature’s 2022 budget included $5.4 million to address maternal mortality, $7.98 million for domestic violence prevention and $1.7 million to fund rape crisis centers.
Last year, DeSantis signed the state’s 15-week abortion ban at a church the week of Easter. Based on the speed with which the twin bans are moving through the legislature, he may be able to recreate similar optics when signing the six-week ban.
The six-week ban, though, will only go into effect once litigation over the existing 15-week ban — set to go before the state’s Supreme Court — is settled. Reproductive rights advocates are arguing the ban violates Florida’s robust right to privacy law. Other abortion restrictions, including a mandatory waiting period, were previously struck down for violating, but that was before DeSantis replaced the court’s three most liberal justices with stalwart conservatives. The court is now counted as one of the most conservative in the nation.
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