‘All Gas, No Brakes’: How Florida Advocates Are Fighting to Enshrine Abortion Rights

On April 1, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the state’s unique privacy law did not include the right to abortion. Despite the timing, there was no humor in a punchline that overturned a 1989 decision.

It was a cruel joke, but this was an expected outcome considering the court’s uneven political bent: Five of the seven justices are Gov. Ron DeSantis appointees, and the current court is a far cry from the more liberal court that affirmed the right to privacy 35 years ago.

The implications are far-reaching, but the immediate consequence was that the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect 30 days later. Due to the bill’s language, the ruling simultaneously upheld and replaced a previous 15-week ban. Advocates call it a total ban, as many are not even aware that they’re pregnant before six weeks.

Enter Floridians Protecting Freedom, which describes itself as “a statewide campaign of allied organizations and concerned citizens working together to protect Floridians’ access to abortion as reproductive health care and defend the right to bodily autonomy.” The coalition includes around 200 local, state, and nationwide organizations—including the ACLU of Florida and Planned Parenthood of South, East, and North Florida—as well as 100 individual health-care providers. Their registered opposition is led by Florida Voters Against Extremism, whose supporters include Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops and Conservatives for Principled Leadership, a PAC chaired by Paul Renner, the state’s house speaker.

The coalition moved to replace the question mark now hovering over abortion rights with a period by securing constitutional protections for the right to choose. Their proposed “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion” reads:

No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or 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.

The proposed amendment provides pregnant people with rights that are leaps and bounds from existing Florida law.

Florida’s currently-active abortion ban has exceptions for certain medical emergencies and fetal anomalies, as well as rape and incest. However, the qualifying conditions render the exceptions ineffective in many situations. Cases in which the patient is in danger of dying or at “serious risk of imminent substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman other than a psychological condition” must be verified in writing by two physicians. The law also prohibits obtaining abortion pills via telehealth appointments or through the mail. Patients must receive them from a physician, in person.

For rape, incest, or human trafficking exceptions to apply, survivors are forced to validate their experiences with medical records, police reports, restraining orders, or other documentation which “proves” their account. But on top of the bureaucratic maze a patient would face in justifying their exception eligibility, many may not even be able to “prove” their abuse because a majority of survivors do not report their assaults—largely due to the ways in which both society and the legal system revictimize them.

Even under the previous 15-week ban, roughly 9,300 people traveled to Florida in 2023 for abortion care, but the state supreme court’s decision completed the South’s transition into a wasteland with regards to reproductive health. The next closest state is North Carolina, which bans abortion at 12 weeks, but it’s simply not a feasible alternative for many people seeking to terminate their pregnancies.

In addition to the increase in travel time and days off work, the state has guidelines that clearly only exist to further complicate and discourage the process. There is a 24-hour waiting period, and those seeking abortions are required to make two in-person visits. As a result, some clinics have resorted to directing patients to nearby Virginia, which allows abortions up to 26 weeks, 6 days.

Now, us Floridians will have Amendment 4, which would enshrine the right to abortion in our state constitution, included on the November ballot. The story of Florida’s citizen-led ballot initiative is a testament to the fighting spirit of those who live in a deeply embattled place.

Our home insurance rates are sky-high and climbing. Our inflation rate is among the highest in the nation. And the state legislature is full of book-banning anti-intellectuals whose hobbies include impeding accurate instruction on U.S. history, voter suppression, and casually attacking LGBTQ+ folks’ civil rights.

But one thing that must be said about Floridians is that we take care of our own. The lifeblood of my state has always been the people, and after the six-week ban passed, people did what we do after every major disaster: We got to work to clean up the mess.

Though polls generally indicate that the majority of Floridians favor abortion rights, the initiative faced an uphill battle to make it on the ballot, in no small part because of the state’s strict rules governing citizen-led petitions. In Florida, the number of required signatures must be at least 8 percent of the district-wide vote in the previous presidential election and must be collected from at least half of the state’s 28 congressional districts.

Inclusion on the ballot in this case required 891,523 signatures, which had to be validated by the Division of Elections by February 1, 2024. In spite of the obstacles, the campaign has been a resounding success, barreling through every roadblock on the way to a crucial Election Day.

In January, the Florida Division of Elections announced it had validated 996,512 signatures out of the 1.2 million collected, figures which emphatically surpassed the minimum requirement in just seven months. In addition, the coalition said it has raised nearly $32 million to date.

Even though Amendment 4 is on the ballot, there is still one last hurdle to clear: A 60 percent supermajority is required for it to pass on Election Day, a more stringent requirement than exists in most states. This will be a challenge in our Sunshine State, where both the government and the populace have been steadily moving to the right since DeSantis took office in 2019. Under his administration, which is a major arms dealer in the manufactured culture war, Florida has quickly gone from being the quintessential swing state to reliably Republican.

Taylor Aguilera, Floridians Protecting Freedom’s organizing director, doesn’t see either of these things as a barrier, citing her experiences on the ground.

“We saw support from nonpartisan, conservative, and liberal voters alike,” she said. “The reality is, limiting government interference with abortion is a nonpartisan issue that a majority of Floridians support.”

Aguilera attributes the campaign’s accomplishments to the sheer determination of supporters and volunteers and their dedication to the cause. Per Aguilera, teams “formed from the Florida Panhandle down to the Florida Keys,” went out into their own communities, and did the legwork necessary to collect signatures.

“You could find our teams anywhere: From farmers markets to concerts to your neighborhood corner store, there would be a canvasser with a clipboard ready to help you sign our petition.” she said.

Volunteers faced everything from extreme summer heat to a state official personally determined to kill the amendment. In November 2023, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody submitted a brief to the court that argued that the language was “vague” and opened the door for so-called “partial birth” abortions. The latter is not an accepted medical term, and abortions later in pregnancy are usually performed due to medical emergencies or untreatable fetal health issues.

In 2022 and 2023, seven states voted on measures to either protect or restrict abortion access. If Amendment 4 succeeds, Florida will join California, Michigan, Ohio, and Vermont in creating a constitutional right to abortion. Anti-abortion measures in Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana were defeated.

As for the future of abortion rights in Florida, my optimism is cautious while Aguilera’s is unwavering.

“We have built an incredible movement that is running an ‘all gas, no brakes’ campaign to kick politicians out of our exam rooms,” she said. “We anticipate winning over 60 percent of the vote this November to ensure the Amendment to Limit Government Interference With Abortion is enshrined in our state constitution.”

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