Florida’s governor signs 15-week abortion ban

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban into law Thursday as the state joined a growing conservative push to restrict access to the procedure ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could roll back abortion rights in America.

“This will represent the most significant protections for life that have been enacted in this state in a generation,” DeSantis said as he signed the bill at an evangelical church in the city of Kissimmee.

Republicans nationwide have moved to place new restrictions on abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court signaled it would uphold a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks. The high court’s decision, expected this summer, could potentially weaken or overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a nationwide right to abortion.

The law DeSantis signed Thursday also deals a blow to overall abortion access in the South, where Florida has provided wider access to the procedure than its regional neighbors.

The new law, which takes effect July 1, contains exceptions if the abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life, prevent serious injury or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It does not allow for exemptions in cases where pregnancies were caused by rape, incest or human trafficking, despite several Democratic attempts to amend the bill. Under current law, Florida allows abortions up to 24 weeks.

A federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report said about 2% of the nearly 72,000 abortions reported in Florida in 2019 were performed after 15 weeks. That same year, 2,256 out-ofstate residents got abortions in Florida, with the majority, or about 1,200 coming, from Georgia and more than 300 from Alabama, according to the CDC. The origin of the remaining patients was not clear.

Democrats were quick to criticize the new law after the signing.

“Politicians have no business getting between a patient and her doctor,” House Democratic Leader Evan Jenne said. “This 15-week abortion ban takes away every woman’s right to make personal decisions that should only be made by themselves, with their family, their doctor, and their faith.”

KENTUCKY LAWSUITS

Meanwhile in Kentucky, abortion-rights groups went to court Thursday seeking to restore abortion services, where the last two abortion clinics signaled they couldn’t immediately comply with sweeping new restrictions imposed by the Republican legislature.

Two lawsuits filed in federal court in Louisville asked that a judge intervene to block the law from taking effect while the case is litigated.

Kentucky’s GOP-dominated legislature overturned Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of the abortion measure on Wednesday as the chants of abortion-rights advocates shouting “bans off our bodies” echoed through the statehouse.

In Kentucky, the new law is filled with revisions to the state’s abortion laws, with many new requirements that clinics must meet.

The two remaining abortion clinics in Kentucky — both in Louisville, the state’s largest city — can’t comply because the law mandates a new regulatory process that hasn’t been set up yet, resulting in an “unconstitutional ban on abortion in Kentucky,” the plaintiffs said.

“It is impossible to comply with its vast provisions, resulting in an immediate ban on abortion in the commonwealth absent this court’s intervention,” they said.

Kentucky’s Republican attorney general, Daniel Cameron, said he is ready to defend the new law.

“The General Assembly passed HB 3 to protect life and promote the health and safety of women, and we are prepared to earnestly defend this new law against the legal challenge from Planned Parenthood and the ACLU,” he said in a statement Thursday.

With this law, Kentucky now aims to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, replacing the 20-week limit in the state code.