Orlando Sentinel

Clinics, doctor target Fla. abortion limit law

State Supreme Court considerin­g changing stance on privacy

- By Jim Saunders

TALLAHASSE­E — Pointing to “long-establishe­d fundamenta­l rights,” attorneys for abortion clinics and a physician argued in a 67-page brief Monday that the Florida Supreme Court should block a law that prevents abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The brief was an opening step as the Supreme Court considers a case that could determine whether a privacy clause in the Florida Constituti­on will continue to protect abortion rights.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office has asked justices to reverse more than three decades of legal precedents and find that the privacy clause does not apply to abortion. But in the brief Monday, attorneys fighting the 15-week law said the court should stand by the precedents.

“Plain text and historical context place beyond doubt that Florida’s privacy clause protects against government­al interferen­ce in all aspects of a person’s private life, including decisions about pregnancy,” the brief said. “The broad language of the privacy clause provides no textual basis to exclude a matter so private and central to personal autonomy as whether to continue a pregnancy and have a child.”

The Republican-controlled Legislatur­e and Gov. Ron DeSantis last year approved the 15-week limit (HB 5) amid a national debate about abortion rights. Seven abortion clinics and a physician, Shelly HsiaoYing Tien, filed the challenge in June, arguing that the law violated the Constituti­on’s privacy clause.

Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper agreed with the plaintiffs and issued a temporary injunction against the law. But a panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal overturned the injunction, ruling that the plaintiffs could not show “irreparabl­e harm” from the 15-week limit.

The appeals court’s decision allowed the 15-week limit to take effect, and the plaintiffs are asking the Supreme Court to reinstate the temporary injunction. Justices in January agreed to take up the case,

which also involves arguments about the “irreparabl­e harm” issue.

Conservati­ves have long criticized a 1989 Florida Supreme Court ruling that set an initial precedent about the privacy clause protecting abortion rights. The battle over the 15-week law is playing out after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion-rights decision.

Moody’s office will not file a full brief until late March. But in a court document last year, the state’s lawyers cited last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in a case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizati­on, to try to bolster arguments in support of the 15-week limit.

“To begin, this (Florida Supreme) Court is likely to hold that the privacy clause of the Florida Constituti­on does not limit the Legislatur­e from regulating abortion,” Moody’s office argued in the document. “As the U.S. Supreme Court recently explained in overruling Roe v. Wade, a right to abortion is not contained in any of the ‘broadly framed’ rights the U.S. Supreme Court’s pre-Roe precedents had establishe­d — whether framed as a ‘right to privacy,’ or as a ‘freedom to make ‘intimate and personal choices’ that are ‘central to personal dignity and autonomy.’ That reasoning obliterate­s the foundation of this (Florida Supreme) Court’s own abortion precedents, which heavily relied on the now-abrogated Roe v. Wade and its progeny in establishi­ng a right to abortion under the Florida Constituti­on.”

But in the brief Monday, attorneys for the plaintiffs disputed such arguments. The brief also said Florida voters approved the privacy clause in 1980 and rejected a proposed 2012 constituti­onal amendment that would have prevented the state Constituti­on from being interprete­d to “create broader rights to an abortion than those contained in the United States Constituti­on.”

 ?? CHASITY MAYNARD/TALLAHASSE­E DEMOCRAT ?? Protesters hold signs as Barbara DeVane, of the Tallahasse­e National Organizati­on for Women, speaks at the Florida Historic Capitol in Tallahasse­e on June 24.
CHASITY MAYNARD/TALLAHASSE­E DEMOCRAT Protesters hold signs as Barbara DeVane, of the Tallahasse­e National Organizati­on for Women, speaks at the Florida Historic Capitol in Tallahasse­e on June 24.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States