Editorial: A haunting abortion question: Could Florida’s ban force unwilling women to terminate?
Put yourself in the shoes of a young Central Florida woman staring down at a little blue plus sign on a pregnancy test. It’s bad news. She’s always wanted children someday, but she doubts she is ready now.
Before May 1, she would have had time to consider options. Could she rely on the baby’s father or her family for help? If she has other children, would their needs compete with that of the new baby? What would she do for child care? Would she be able to keep working — and if she’s in school, would she be forced to drop out? Would her take-home pay cover the expenses of food, shelter and other basic needs of her child — and herself?
Is she ready to be a parent?
That last question encompasses all the hopes and fears of anyone staring, for the first time, at a positive pregnancy test. Given time to consider options, that young woman might be able to say yes — might feel more confident about going forward with an unplanned pregnancy.
But thanks to Florida lawmakers who enacted a deceptive, coercive six-week abortion ban, time is a luxury she does not have. She picks up the phone and makes an appointment.
Time is the enemy
Because her time is running out. Under a law that took effect May 1, a woman has six weeks from the date of gestation to opt for an abortion, unless she can meet one of a narrowly drawn set of exceptions such as rape or a fetus that is highly unlikely to survive. After 15 weeks, even those choices go away.. And that gestation date is calculated from the first day of her last menstrual period, encompassing two weeks or more before she is actually pregnant. In practice, a Florida woman’s access to abortion ends about three or four weeks into her pregnancy. For some women, that’s before they even realize they are pregnant.
“It’s an arbitrary date. (Lawmakers) are pressuring people to make choices about very personal issues,” says Laura Goodhue, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida. She doesn’t have data on how many abortions have taken place since May 1 when the six-week ban went into effect. But she does know that over the past few weeks, Planned Parenthood locations in Florida have turned away approximately 200 people who were seeking abortions but missed the cutoff.
Even before that law went into effect, the number of Florida abortions was on the rise. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank, Florida saw an estimated 7,100 abortions in January 2023. In February 2024, that number climbed to 7,400. The same trends manifested many states that enacted harsh restrictions on abortion rights — in Arizona, the number of estimated abortions per month increased by about 20% over the same time period.
Beyond termination
An analysis by University of Utah researchers lays out just how terrified many young Americans are at the potential loss of reproductive freedom. In a national survey involving tens of thousands of patients, there was a marked increase in the number of young people seeking permanent sterilization following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. (extra period). For the first time, nearly 10% of male patients seeking vasectomies were under the age of 30 — compared to 6.2% just a few years ago. The same trends are seen among women seeking tubal ligations, other studies have found — though the numbers are less clear, since women are more likely to be denied tubal ligations and other fertility-ending measures.
And there’s no telling how many pregnancies will be endangered if Florida sees the same exodus of obstetricians and other providers seen in other states.
Florida voters will have a chance to make things right in November, when they vote on a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to abortion.
By then, Florida leaders may have been forced to acknowledge a cruel reality: As abortion restrictions become harsher, people start to feel more desperate — and an increasing number of women may opt for abortions they do not want and might have avoided.
If they had been allowed the time to make the decision they really wanted, and the autonomy to make their own health-care decisions, things might have been different. Is that what Florida lawmakers really wanted?
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
