Florida abortion rights activists win over Republicans in ballot measure push

PINECREST, Fla.  — Jaymie Carter is a registered Republican.

She has been named by two Republican governors — first Rick Scott, then Ron DeSantis — to sit on the Board of Trustees for the State College of Florida, and she says she voted for DeSantis in his 2022 campaign for governor.

But when it comes to the issue of abortion, she’s breaking with her party.

“Women are concerned about what’s happening with our bodies and our right to choose. And there’s a lot of people that you wouldn’t think would be the pro-choice advocates, but they are,” she said. “And the government overreach, it’s huge right now.”

Carter is one of more than 150,000 registered Republican voters who have signed a petition in support of a ballot amendment that would bar the state from restricting abortion “before viability” — which is usually at 24 weeks — or “when necessary to protect the patient’s health.”

That total comes from the Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, one of several groups working to gather the 891,523 signatures necessary to get the measure on the ballot, working with Floridians Protecting Freedom, the campaign leading the ballot initiative. The group says it has gathered and submitted more than 1.3 million signatures so far. The website of the Florida Division of Elections says it has validated 687,699 signatures as of mid-December.

Florida is one of nine states where groups are pushing to get measures on the ballot that would bar restrictions on abortion rights, following a streak of wins for similar measures in Kansas and Ohio.

And as the Feb. 1 deadline to get the petitions submitted and verified approaches in Florida, some Republican voters are coming out publicly to support and even advocate for it.

Carol Whitmore is a member of three Republican clubs, including the Manatee Republican Executive Committee and the Bradenton Republican Club. She was also a Manatee County commissioner for 16 years until 2022, when she lost her primary race to a candidate positioning himself as more conservative — including on the issue of abortion.

She says she has collected nearly 100 petitions in support of the abortion-rights ballot amendment signed by friends and acquaintances, most of whom are Republicans and independents.

“I had to keep printing [petitions] I was getting so many people to support this,” Whitmore said. “The government and federal and state have kind of lost touch with the people that make the decisions. We got them elected, and some aren’t listening to us. So I think this will be proof, just like the state of Ohio and other states that were very conservative, that this is going to pass.”

Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition Executive Director Anna Hochkammer is a registered Democrat. She says the key to making room for Republican supporters is leaving the door open as wide as possible.

She avoids terms like “pregnant people” and sticks with “women and girls” when she talks about abortion, leaving the issue of gender-inclusive language to other groups.

“We stay as far away from jargon or from the speech that sort of signals to people whether you’re on the left or the right of the political spectrum, and we acknowledge the elephant in the room at the very top of every conversation,” Hochkammer said. “We try and create a space where we all acknowledge we disagree on many, many things. We happen to agree on this issue, and all are welcome.”

It’s not just women who are supporting the effort.

Former state Rep. Carlos Lacasa was a staunch conservative in office who worked to advance then-Gov. Jeb Bush’s agenda. Now he is supporting the ballot amendment by advocating for it publicly and gathering signatures from friends and colleagues.

In his view, the conservative values he advocated for as a lawmaker are also in line with the abortion-rights measure.

“I expect my privacy rights to be respected by the government. I don’t want to be forced to be vaccinated. I don’t want to be forced into unreasonable lockdowns. And for that reason, I think that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental and should be defended,” Lacasa said.

Recent Gallup polls show just 24% of Republicans believe abortion should be illegal in all cases, and a 2014 Pew Research survey in Florida found 29% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

But Florida has a reputation as a Republican stronghold, including on the issue of abortion.

DeSantis won re-election by nearly 20 percentage points and signed legislation that would ban most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. If the state Supreme Court upholds a 15-week ban that went into effect last year, the six-week ban would automatically go into effect.

Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at Florida Atlantic University, believes the state will take a different tack on this particular ballot issue.

“You’re going to get substantial support across party lines for this kind of amendment. We’ve seen that even in states that are more Republican than Florida is,” Wagner said. “The big caveat, though, especially here in Florida, is that the threshold for a constitutional amendment in Florida is 60%. And that’s a difficult threshold on any issue, let alone one that can be quite as divisive as the abortion issue.”

The state Republican Party did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

The state’s Republican attorney general, Ashley Moody, has filed a brief urging the state Supreme Court to keep the question from appearing on the ballot, regardless of how many signatures are collected.

Whitmore believes the ballot measure will succeed in spite of any procedural obstacles.

“Everybody has the impression that ... this ballot won’t pass in Florida, because we are so conservative,” she said. “I think that’s a misconception. This is something that a lot of people don’t talk about, but they know how they’re going to vote. And when you get behind that booth and do your thing — we’re going to speak up for ourselves.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com