Florida issues emergency rules listing exceptions for 6-week abortion ban
Amid criticism of Florida’s six-week abortion ban, state health regulators issued emergency rules Thursday clarifying what medical conditions qualify for exceptions under the new law.
The rules say that if a woman’s water breaks prematurely, attempting to induce delivery is not defined as an abortion if the fetus does not survive, nor is the treatment of an ectopic pregnancy or trophoblastic tumor, a rare growth that forms in the uterus.
Providers have been demanding clarity since the state’s 15-week ban in 2022, and calls for guidance increased in the days leading up to the six-week ban, which took effect Wednesday.
Both laws allow exceptions for the health of the mother but do not provide specific examples of what conditions qualify. Violators could lose their medical licenses and face third-degree felony charges.
But the emergency rules don’t provide much more clarity, said Dr. Nisha Verma, an OBGYN and abortion care provider in Atlanta. She said the guidance is largely irrelevant and includes politicized language that may even add to confusion.
“They just use so much inaccurate and stigmatizing language that just contributes to misinformation,” Verma said. “This doesn’t clarify the majority of situations that doctors are going to be dealing with because there’s no way to really do that in the setting of these deeply problematic laws.”
For example, Verma said, the rules repeatedly use the term “unborn baby” rather than “fetus.” They also doesn’t mention dilation and evacuation, a common abortion method that is used to treat women whose water broke prematurely, she added.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, echoed Verma’s criticism.
“They are basically just drawing a distinction between the abortions they think are acceptable versus those that they think are not by .. not calling them abortion,” she said. “It’s so bizarre.”
There have been several instances since the 15-week ban’s passage where Florida women were turned away from hospitals after their water broke prematurely, with potentially life-threatening consequences.
Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood was cited in 2023 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for refusing to provide an abortion for a woman whose water broke because she was past Florida’s 15-week limit.
The Agency for Health Care Administration, which released the rules, contended the law’s exceptions are clear and accused abortion-right advocates of spreading “disinformation.”
The rules themselves include language that says they were published in response to a “deeply dishonest scare campaign and disinformation being perpetuated by the media, the Biden Administration, and advocacy groups to misrepresent the Heartbeat Protection Act and the State’s efforts to protect life, moms, and families.”
Eskamani said she’s hopeful they will help cut down on life-threatening situations, but she took issue with the “incredibly political” part of it.
“It’s not the Biden administration that passed an abortion ban. It is [the DeSantis administration] that passed an abortion ban that has created just intense chaos and confusion among patients and among medical practitioners,” Eskamani said. “I find the tone of their emergency rules to be incredibly problematic and disingenuous, and highly delayed.”
The six-week law offers exceptions for health, in part, if “two physicians certify in writing that, in reasonable medical judgment, the termination of the pregnancy is necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life or avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman other than a psychological condition.”
One physician’s approval is enough if another is not available.
The law also offers exceptions for rape, human trafficking and incest up to 15 weeks of pregnancy but requires documentation such as a police report or a restraining order. It also has exceptions up to the third trimester for a “fatal fetal abnormality,” a nonclinical term defined as a condition where the baby will die at birth or immediately after.
Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the anti-abortion group Liberty Counsel, said the AHCA’s emergency order “doesn’t add anything new.”
“I think there has been a lot of fear-mongering and disinformation that goes beyond what the six-week law actually does. So this helps to bring some clarity to it,” Staver said.
The Biden Administration has argued that a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, already requires hospitals to provide abortions when necessary for a woman’s health. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in April but has yet to rule whether that law applies.
