Creators of Florida’s extreme abortion bans now mislead the public on ballot amendment | Opinion
The same state leaders who banned abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy — without exceptions for rape and incest — and barely waited a year to pass a six-week ban, are now calling a ballot referendum to restore reproductive rights “extreme.”
That makes no sense. Constitutional Amendment 4, on the ballot in the November elections, would mostly return abortion rights to what they were for decades in Florida, before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022 and the Florida Legislature passed one of the strictest laws in the nation.
And yet, as the Herald reported Tuesday, this is how House Speaker Paul Renner, who ushered in the passage of the six-week ban, characterized the ballot item: “This amendment goes far far beyond where most Floridians would land on the issue and is extreme in its scope”
The standard for nearly 50 years — which is popular with Floridians, according to polls — is not extreme. Banning abortions before most women even know they are pregnant is. Even Donald Trump called the six-week ban a “terrible mistake” last year.
The Florida Supreme Court approved the language of Amendment 4 on Monday. On the same day, it ruled in favor of Florida’s 15-week ban, which will trigger the six-week ban starting May 1.
The amendment will reverse the ban if it’s approved by at least 60% of voters. The measure states: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion before viability,” which is a fetus’ ability to survive outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks of gestation.
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, it also concluded that states couldn’t restrict abortion access until viability.
Under Florida’s Amendment 4, abortions could only happen after viability “when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” Again, that’s similar to what was allowed under Roe v. Wade.
Unlike Roe, the amendment would preserve a Florida law that requires parental consent for minors to get an abortion. How radical!
Attorney General Ashley Moody unsuccessfully tried to convince the state Supreme Court that voters would be confused by Amendment 4’s viability provision. Now Republicans are confusing voters. They know the amendment has a strong chance of approval.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ spokeswoman said on Tuesday that the “language hides the amendment’s true purpose of mandating that abortions be permitted up to the time of birth.”
The implication of those words is that women would be getting abortions like elective surgeries — whenever they want. But “no one is doing an elective [pregnancy] termination on a viable child,” Dr. Nancy Staats, a retired anesthesiologist and critical care physician who helped gather petition signatures for Amendment 4, told the Herald Editorial Board. Claims of abortions happening moments before, or even after, birth are “false,” according to KFF, a nonpartisan health-policy research nonprofit organization.
More than 93% of U.S. abortions in 2021 were performed by 13 weeks of pregnancy and 5.7% at 14 to 20 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fewer than 1% happened at or after 21 weeks and those procedures can cost up to $30,000, KFF Health News reported. A researcher who spoke to KFF found most of those later abortions happen before 24 weeks.
Because abortions after the point of viability could only happen to protect the patient’s health under Amendment 4, these are excruciatingly difficult situations for women.
Rep. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, the sponsor of both of Florida’s abortions bans, minimized that plight by saying on Tuesday that “Health could be viewed to be a headache or a stomach ache,” the Herald reported. But the current political environment on the issue makes doctors afraid — not emboldened — to perform the procedure. A South Florida woman, for example, was forced to fly to Washington, D.C., last year to get a medically-needed abortion.
Judgment calls about what threatens a woman’s health aren’t easy — and physicians, not lawmakers, should be making them. Sometimes, a doctor must determine if a fetus could survive outside the womb and the woman decides whether to terminate a pregnancy or risk dying.
Doctors do their best to save a fetus as a pregnancy progresses, Staats said. By suggesting that doctors will perform and women will have abortions on demand, at any point, Florida’s governor and some lawmakers are showing what extremism truly looks like.
Click here to send the letter.
