Trump says abortion should be left to states but doesn’t say how he’ll vote in Florida
Former President Donald Trump on Monday made good on a promise to say more on abortion but declined to say whether he’ll back a proposed Florida constitutional amendment that would protect abortion rights up to the point of fetal viability even as he insisted that individual states — not the federal government — should govern access to the procedure.
Trump’s remarks in a video came a week after the Florida Supreme Court handed down two key decisions on abortion rights: one paving the way for a six-week ban on the procedure to take effect and the other allowing a proposed constitutional amendment safeguarding abortion access up to the point of fetal viability to appear on the November ballot. terview. “The laws stay on the books until a court declares the particular law to be invalid.”
DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comments as to exactly how Amendment 4, the Right to Abortion
Initiative, would override state laws such as parental consent.
But what’s clear from the ballot-summary language is that it explicitly protects a different section of the state constitution that requires parents or guardians to be notified before their child has an abortion. And it’s silent on other Florida laws regulating abortions, such as a 2020 state law requiring parents to give consent to the medical procedure before a girl can access it.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers disagree on how likely a court challenge to that 2020 parental-consent law would be should the abortion-rights ballot initiative pass in November. Lawmakers across the aisle also disagree over the impact it would have considering how the state’s requirement that parents be notified first has been implemented in Florida.
WHAT DOES THE AMENDMENT SAY, AND NOT SAY?
When Floridians go into their voting booths on Nov. 5, they will see the following ballot title for the abortion initiative: “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion.”
That title will be followed by this summary language: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or
Pressed for his position on abortion in his home state, Trump promised to release more details. Instead, Trump addressed the issue of abortion rights more broadly. He said states should be left to decide the issue and declined to back a federal ban that opponents of abortion rights have long sought.
“From a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land, and, in this case, the law of the state,” said Trump, who has taken credit for helping overturn the landmark precedent on abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade.
“Many states,” he noted, “will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative” stances, he noted. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.” restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
Sen. Erin Grall, a Vero Beach Republican and attorney who sponsored Florida’s 2020 parentalconsent law in the House, told the Herald/Times she thought “any court in Florida would have a difficult time upholding our parental-consent statutes if this passes because of the word ‘restrict’ in the amendment.”
And she said that the specific exception for parental notification combined with the broad “no law shall” language made her wary there would be room for additional regulation by lawmakers after it passed.
“That’s what I’m trying to highlight, is how extreme of a position this amendment is,” Grall said.
But Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat who is the abortion expert for her party in the Florida House, cast doubt on whether anyone would challenge the parentalconsent laws, pointing out that they hadn’t been challenged yet, even though there had been legal precedent to do so prior to the Florida Supreme Court’s April 1 ruling.
“I don’t know anyone planning to do that to be honest,” said Eskamani on Friday. “There’s always a distinction between laws that impact adults and minors, especially with this court.”
And in practical terms, Eskamani, who once worked at Planned Parenthood,
In his video statement on Monday, Trump also stressed that he supported access to fertility treatments, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled this year that frozen embryos are children. Alabama lawmakers passed a measure protecting access to IVF after the court decision caused widespread political backlash.
Trump’s announcement served as an acknowledgement of how politically fraught the issue of abortion rights has been for Republicans since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago. He has chastised members of his own party for going too far to restrict abortion access and even blamed the GOP’s lackluster performance in the 2022 midterm elections on abortion hardliners in his party.
Democrats are hoping to capitalize on abortion restrictions
said there was little daylight between parental notification and parental consent in the first place.
“Before consent, a parent had to sign a paper that they were notified, which is basically still consent,” Eskamani said. “If you wanted to block access for your minor, you simply wouldn’t sign.”
Eskamani added: “When I worked at Planned Parenthood, we required that notification form to be notarized. You can’t just say you told a parent. You need to prove it.”
THE HISTORY OF PARENTAL CONSENT
The then-Democraticcontrolled Florida Legislature first passed a law to require minors obtain parental consent before receiving an abortion in
1988.
This law was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court in 1989 in a landmark case, In Re: T.W., on the grounds that the law violated the state’s explicit constitutional right to privacy.
In 2004, the Legislature referred a constitutional amendment to the ballot that would essentially carve out notification from the abortion-privacy ruling. That amendment passed with 64.67% and is in the state’s constitution today. This constitutional provision is what the amendment language speaks to when it states: “This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
Parental notification was codified into state law the following year in 2005 and has been updated several times since.
Even though the 1989 abortion-privacy case still in Florida and elsewhere in this year’s elections by casting Trump and other Republicans as extremists on the issue. After the Florida Supreme Court ruled last week that the state’s six-week abortion ban could go into effect, President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, which has been reluctant to invest in Florida this year, announced that it sees a path to victory in the state.
With Trump clarifying his belief that abortion rights should be decided by the states, Democrats are likely to link him to some of the strictest abortion laws in the country.
Biden pounced on Trump’s comments on Monday, saying the former president bears the blame for the state-level abortion restrictions that have cropped up since Roe v. Wade was overturned. He also said the remarks offered stood as legal precedent, in 2020 Florida Republican lawmakers again passed a parental-consent law, which is on the books today, and was never challenged.
Two years later, antiabortion activists received two gifts in Florida. On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, which since 1973 had federally protected access to abortions until the point of viability, around 24 weeks. And then, roughly five months later, state elections delivered Florida Republicans supermajorities in both the House and Senate.
That year, Republicans passed a 15-week ban on abortions. It was challenged under the abortionprivacy case in the summer of 2022. In 2023, Republicans no real assurance that Trump would reject a national abortion ban if elected to the White House in November.
“Let there be no illusion,” Biden said. “If Donald Trump is elected and the MAGA Republicans in Congress put a national abortion ban on the Resolute Desk, Trump will sign it into law.”
Trump on Monday, however, sought to turn the tables on Democrats by claiming they are willing to go too far to preserve abortion rights. He accused Democrats of seeking to legalize abortion up until — and even after — birth, echoing rhetoric that other Republicans have used to criticize the Florida ballot initiative to safeguard access to the procedure.
“It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones on this position, because they support abortion up to, and even
passed a six-week ban, even though the 15week ban was still being litigated.
MAJOR DECISIONS
Last week, the conservative-leaning state Supreme Court dropped a couple of legal bombshells. It overturned the abortionprivacy case to uphold the state’s 15-week abortion ban, triggering the state’s 2023 six-week abortion ban to go into effect next month.
But it also approved the Florida abortion-rights initiative, Amendment 4, to go on the November ballot, putting the question of access to the medical procedure directly to voters.
Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book, a Davie Democrat who leads on abortion in her chamber and supports the abortionrights beyond, the ninth month
[of pregnancy],” he said. “The concept of having an abortion in the later months and even execution after birth … is unacceptable, and almost everyone agrees with that.”
Proponents of the Florida abortion measure say the proposed amendment would not legalize abortion up until birth, noting that “viability” is generally understood to be around 24 weeks of pregnancy. The proposal would also allow for a woman to have an abortion when it’s determined to be medically necessary to protect the patient’s health, but the procedure is rarely conducted after 21 weeks of pregnancy, according to KFF, a non-profit, non-partisan, healthcare-policy organization.
“Claims of abortions occurring ‘moments before birth’ or even ‘after birth’ are false. These scenarios do not occur, nor are they legal in the United States,” KFF states in a policy paper on late-term abortions. ballot initiative, said she was in favor of protecting parental notification in Florida because “there’s a place for that.”
“While, I think, the right is trying to cast this as extreme, dangerous, horrific … parental notification is something that’s important and isn’t touched,” said Book. “But we still want to restore rights to women to have the medical freedom to make decisions for their own bodies.”
Regarding parental consent, Book echoed Richard in saying the amendment, if passed, wouldn’t “automatically wash the books” of that specific state law.
“But I do think that we’re going to find ourselves in litigation,” Book said.