‘We’re looking at November’: Will abortion sway Florida voters?
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TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights will end up on the Florida ballot in November. But will that change who goes to the polls, and who they vote for?
On Monday, Florida’s Supreme Court also upheld the state’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, meaning Florida’s six-week ban will take effect within the next month.
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In a statement, President Joe Biden called it an extreme decision.
“Yesterday’s extreme decision puts desperately needed medical care even further out of reach for millions of women in Florida and across the South. The Court not only upheld Florida’s current ban on women being able to make their own reproductive choices, it will likely trigger Governor DeSantis’ even more extreme law that would prevent women from accessing care before many even know they are pregnant. It is outrageous. Florida’s bans – like those put forward by Republican elected officials across the country – are putting the health and lives of millions of women at risk. These extreme laws take away women’s freedom to make their own health care decisions and threaten physicians with jail time simply for providing the medical care that they were trained to provide. Vice President Harris and I stand with the vast majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose, including in Florida, where voters will have the opportunity to make their voices heard in support of a reproductive freedom ballot initiative this November. We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting reproductive freedom in Florida and across the nation and will continue to call on Congress to pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v. Wade in every state.”
President Joe Biden
Florida House Speaker Paul Renner disagrees, calling the six-week ban “a compromise.”
“What Florida hasn’t done is an outright ban on abortion, no exceptions,” he said. “We begin when a child has a heartbeat.”
“We also have broad exceptions for rape, incest human trafficking, the life of the mother, fetal abnormalities, so it’s a compromise that I think addresses where many Floridians are,” Renner added.
Democrats are looking to seize on abortion as an issue that will help them win the upcoming presidential election.
“Let me be clear that Donald Trump is directly responsible for what is happening here today,” lorida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell said in a call with Biden’s campaign manager Tuesday. “He appointed the justices that overturned Roe, paving the way for bans in Florida and across the southeastern United States. He continues to brag about overturning Roe.”
“He has said women should be punished for getting abortions, and he has made clear that if he is re-elected, he will try to ban abortions in all 50 states,” she continued.
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The Florida Supreme Court decided to let voters to have final say on Amendment 4, which states “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability, or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, determined by their health care provider.”
Political analyst Tara Newsom believes having these issues on the ballot could increase voter turnout.
“Listen, Ohio is a red state. Florida is a red state,” she said. “When you have voters who are sensitive to human rights, reproductive rights, healthcare rights.”
“They are both men and women and they come out to vote,” she added.
Now strategists are wondering if these hot button issues bring out more voters, who will they vote for? And could that be enough to begin moving Florida back to its former swing state status?
“I think we’re looking at November as whether or not this was just a swing too far with DeSantis, if the culture wars went too far to the right and whether or not Florida is going to try to center itself,” Newsom said. “There’s been a lot of discussion about the growing number of Republicans in the state, but we need to remember that an even larger growth has happened in the independents.”
“This is their chance to really show, are they moving the state back to a center, back to moderate politics and really rejecting that far right swing DeSantis brought with his culture wars,” she added.
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60% of Florida voters would need to vote for Amendment 4 for it to pass.
Newsom expects that to happen, but said the real story will be what the Florida Legislature does next.
“We have a long history in Florida of taking direct democracy and the will of the people and massaging it once the legislature meets,” she said. “So, we’re really going to see whether the legislature actually changes the meaning of viability from 24 weeks to something else and whether they really look at the healthcare provider.”
She said those are the two controversial aspects of the constitutional amendment Floridians will be voting on in November.
“That’s the power that they have,” Newsom explained. “The power to take the constitutional amendment and then when they implement it, the implementation language can then be massaged and really create greater obstacles that are really politically motivated and not motivated by direct democracy and the will of the people.”
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