Voting to Ban Abortion in the U.S. Today: The Right to Choose Whether to Have a Birth before You Know You Are Pregnant

The White House said after the vote that the ban would prevent four million Florida women from accessing abortion care before they knew they were pregnant. “This ban would also impact the nearly 15 million women of reproductive age who live in abortion-banning states throughout the South, many of whom have previously relied on travel to Florida as an option to access care.”

“Let’s be clear about the silent part: You just don’t want women to have choice,” House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat, said Thursday during debate on the bill.

The law contains some exceptions, including to save the woman’s life. Abortions for pregnancies involving rape or incest would be allowed until 15 weeks of pregnancy, provided a woman has documentation such as a restraining order or police report. The rape and incest provisions are sensible.

The bill would also ban doctors from prescribing an abortion via telehealth and require medication for abortion be dispensed by a physician, not by mail.

“A woman’s right to choose, I’ve heard people talk about that. Well, that right to choose begins before you have sex,” state Rep. Kiyan Michael, a Jacksonville Republican, said Thursday. It ought to be after you have sex.

Thursday’s vote comes as the national debate on abortion has once again intensified after a Texas judge ordered the suspension of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a medication abortion drug. A federal appeals court has frozen parts of the order, and the Department of Justice is asking the US Supreme Court to intervene in the dispute. The outcome of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, in which the future of abortion access took center stage and resulted in a Democratic turnout of over 50%, led to the Florida vote.

The Florida Democratic Party chairwoman and the head of the Senate were arrested after a protest broke out at the state Capitol following the passage of the bill.

abortion rights groups sued to overturn the law The case is currently before the Florida Supreme Court, which declined to block the law in the meantime.

The makeup of the Florida Supreme Court has changed a lot over the past few years and is now heavily influenced by the conservative views of the current governor. He will replace Justice Ricky Polston with a fifth justice by the end of the year.

The number of pregnancies terminated during the first six weeks isn’t published. According to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, more than 82,000 abortions took place in Florida in 2022, most of them occurring in the first quarter of the year.

The Six-Week Abortion Ban in the U.S. as Seen by a GOP Campaigner: Can It Help Ron DeSantis?

A Republican fundraiser told CNN that the six-week ban will be great in the primary, where former President Donald Trump could face off against Ron DeSantis, who voted in favor of abortion rights.

If the current 15-week ban is upheld in the ongoing legal challenge, the six-week ban will not go into effect.

The policy would have wider implications for abortion access throughout the South in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving decisions about abortion access to states. Georgia forbids abortion after six weeks ofPregnancy, and other states have banned it at all stages.

“We have the opportunity to lead the national debate about the importance of protecting life and giving every child the opportunity to be born and find his or her purpose,” said Republican Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, who carried the bill in the House.

Most of the drugs that are used for abortion are provided nationally, but there is a law in Florida that only allows them to be handed out in person or by a physician. Separately, nationwide access to the abortion pill mifepristone is being challenged in court.

The bill’s exceptions and period of six weeks were a compromise, said the Republican Rep. Mike Beltran.

According to a veteran GOP consultant in Wisconsin, Democrats have used abortion as a motivator in recent races. But he said it will be harder to attack DeSantis on abortion in his state, where the current law, passed in 1849 and reinstated after the fall of Roe, bars abortion without exceptions.

“Have we learned anything?” Driskell said of the recent elections in other states. Do we not listen to the people of Florida and what they are asking for?

The SCOTUS decision has caused a lot of national angst, but DeSantis has stayed uncharacteristically reserved. Unlike other issues, like eliminating college diversity programs and curbing legal protections for the media, he has elevated with staged news conferences and frequent messaging on conservative media, DeSantis has offered vague commitments to protect life but repeatedly declined to say where Florida should draw the line on abortion access.

The conservative policies of the Republican supermajority in the Statehouse this year are likely to help Ron DeSantis’ White House run, as he prepares to announce his candidacy after the session ends in May.

Did a Florida governor sign the anti-abortion bill last night? The response of the Florida House and Senate to DeSantis

Democrats, without power at any level of state government, had mostly turned to stall tactics and protests to oppose the bill, which easily passed both chambers on largely party-line votes. The Senate approved it last week, and the House did the same Thursday.

Robinson said women’s right to choose is being taken away. I wonder if Florida is truly a free state.

At Liberty University, a Baptist college in Virginia, where the pro-life crowd was overwhelmingly pro-life, the speaker did not mention the bill he signed the night before.

The private signing was very different to the celebratory event that took place a year before, when news cameras captured the scene of the abortion ban being enacted at the mega church.

In an early sign of how Democrats intend to paint DeSantis, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a statement called Florida’s bill “extreme and dangerous” and said it “is out of step with the views of the vast majority of the people of Florida and of all the United States.”

The issue of Dobbs decision does not seem to have been changed by the issue of general voters. A Marquette Law School poll last month found two-thirds of voters opposed the ruling, nearly identical to the results in its survey following the November midterms.

DeSantis signed the bill at 10:45 p.m. ET Thursday in a closed-door ceremony after returning from a political event in Ohio, a rare-late night action by a governor who often times his actions to maximize exposure.

John Stemberger, president of Florida Family Policy Council, said that he could not say how the man would be received by the public. I am not concerned with words but with action and that is what he is.

Some Republican operatives think that the person who’s better positioned to stave off the right from attacking him is Ron DeSantis. In a series of posts on Twitter, Jon Schweppe, director of policy and government affairs at the conservative American Principles Project, suggested that by supporting some exceptions for rape and incest, DeSantis would neutralize a key Democratic talking point.

Last week’s defeat of a conservative judge in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race brought up an alarm that the Republican Party needs to figure out the abortion issue quickly.

Voters will feel that his answer is better compared to the 1849 law. “If he signs that law, that will be an improvement of the law that’s here. It is better than what we already have in our mind, but it is not as middle of the road as some states.

Many of the conservatives who will be voting for the next Republican nominee will expect their nominee to use the power of the presidency to end abortion nationwide. DeSantis, who has not yet declared but is laying the groundwork for a campaign, has so far not faced any questions about what abortion restrictions he would pursue if elected to the White House.

It’s a question that has already tripped up one potential rival for the nomination. A day after sidestepping a question, Republican senator Tim Scott stated that it would be up to the states to solve the problem and he would sign a 20-week ban if it hit his desk.

Pro-Life: Defending Your Stand for Abortion with a Drug That Makes Us Live, But You Can’t Get Your Head in the Sand

Nor has DeSantis weighed in on the ongoing legal saga surrounding mifepristone, one of the drugs that has been used safely for more than 20 years to provide abortions via medication.

Katie Daniel, the state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said Republican candidates risk looking inauthentic if they try to obfuscate their position on abortion. She pointed to Pennsylvania Senate candidate and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who during the GOP primary called abortion “murder” at any stage but in the general election said he supported exceptions for rape, incest or if the mother’s life is at risk. Oz said in the debate that he wanted women, doctors, local political leaders to decide at the state level.

“Our message to candidates is define yourself or other candidates will define it for you and you’re not going to like their version of you,” Daniel said. The strategy of burying your head in the sand is not going to work.