Darkness in the Sunshine State
In a pair of near-simultaneous decisions, the Florida Supreme Court reaffirmed the state’s 15-week abortion ban and allowed its hyper-restrictive six-week ban to go into effect, while also allowing a November ballot amendment that will put to voters the question of whether abortion rights will be enshrined in the state constitution.
This is a victory for the anti-choice conservatives, but a Pyrrhic one. In a matter of months, Florida voters will likely follow the lead of voters in many other states, including cherry-red ones like Montana and Kansas, in either rejecting abortion restrictions or enshrining abortion rights into state constitutions. Moreover, the Democrats could hardly have been handed a better electoral vehicle to turn out voters. Abortion is, bar none, the party’s strongest issue and the GOP’s most starkly unpopular policy plank.
That electoral opportunity, of course, won’t stop tens of thousands from being denied necessary care in the meantime. As both advocates and medical professionals routinely point out, a six-week abortion ban skirts quite close to a total abortion ban. At that stage, a good chunk of women will not yet realize they’re even pregnant. By the time that reality dawns, it will be too late to get safe and effective care. Some will turn to unsafe methods.
While the Florida ban does include exceptions for incest, rape, fetal abnormalities and to protect the mother’s life, these seem to be rather onerous. The former two, for example, require a police report, court order or other proof, though unfortunately many such cases go unreported. We’ve also seen from other states’ bans that rather than the authorities deferring to the professional judgement of medical providers on the need for abortion care in certain cases, it can often end up being the other way around.
With Florida even temporarily falling to anti-choice zealotry, the entire Southeast region becomes an abortion care desert. Very restrictive policies extend westward to Texas and Oklahoma and northward to Indiana and West Virginia. Millions will be shut out from care. This affects not only these states but those further afield, which will increasingly have to absorb the patients that could not receive care in the dead zone. Many others won’t have the resources or time to travel and end up having either unwanted children or health- and life-threatening pregnancies.
Perhaps most ominous in the amendment ruling was the suggestion that even if Floridians turn out to enshrine abortion in their constitution, the court might interfere again to try to nullify voter preference. The ruling noted that at issue would be the “personhood rights as applied to the unborn child,” suggesting that it might later take aim at the amendment itself, simultaneously sending the question over to the voters and warning the voters that their choice might not be respected.
Florida voters can’t exactly vote the justices out, but there is one person to hold responsibility: Gov. Ron DeSantis, who not only signed the legislation but appointed five out of seven of the court’s judges, creating a hard-right supermajority. Of course, the ultimate cause of Americans losing abortion rights is due to Donald Trump, who paved the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to so wrongly overturn Roe v. Wade.