Florida lawmakers have voted to prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, culminating a rapid effort by elected Republicans and Governor Ron DeSantis to transform the state into one of the most restrictive in the country.
DeSantis, a likely 2024 Republican presidential contender, has indicated he will sign the newban, which would end Florida’s long-held role as a destination for women from across the Deep South seeking abortions and force them to travel further, to states such as North Carolina or Illinois, for care.
In the six months after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion last year, no state saw a greater increase in the number of legal abortions performed each month than Florida, according to a report released on Tuesday (Wednesday NZT).
DeSantis is expected to sign the six-week ban despite the complicated politics the issue presents. The new restriction would help him, to an extent, with conservative Republicans in a presidential primary but would likely be far less appealing to many moderate Republicans and independent voters in a general election.
Prohibiting abortion so early in pregnancy would have not long ago seemed unthinkable in Florida, which until recently was a swing state governed from near the political centre, rather than the far right.
The new ban is among several sweeping and divisive measures adopted over the past month by the Florida Legislature, which was empowered by DeSantis’ landslide reelection victory. The governor has signed laws allowing people to carry concealed weapons without a permit and broadly expanding school vouchers. State senators passed a bill banning medication and surgery for children seeking gender transitions and another prohibiting children from attending certain drag shows.
Approval of the six-week abortion ban by the Florida House of Representatives was a foregone conclusion on Thursday. Still, Democrats offered dozens of amendments, none of which were adopted. Protesters interrupted the tense discussion, prompting Republican leaders to clear the viewing gallery. The demonstrators briefly gathered outside the chamber, chanting, “Hands off our bodies!”
Police and pro-choice activists in Tallahassee, Florida on April 3. Photo / AP
As recently as a year ago, Florida allowed abortions until 24 weeks of pregnancy. Then, last spring, DeSantis and state lawmakers limited access to the procedure after 15 weeks, a major change that took effect in July and is still being legally challenged. The new six-week ban is contingent, in part, on whether the Florida Supreme Court upholds the 15-week restriction.
In the past, the court has ruled that the explicit right to privacy guaranteed by the state constitution protects abortion rights. But that was before DeSantis appointed several more conservative justices, who have shifted the court’s ideological balance.
Most of the 13 states that prohibit almost all abortions are in the South, including Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Florida would now join Georgia at the next-most-restrictive level with the six-week ban, around the time when fetal cardiac activity can be detected. At that early gestation stage, many people do not yet realise that they are pregnant.
At the same time, duelling court rulings and legal challenges over the use of an abortion drug have made the future of medication abortions unclear.
While legal abortions in the United States fell by 6 per cent in the six months after the decision overturning Roe v Wade, Florida recorded the largest numerical increase of any state: 1200 a month. The share of all US abortions performed there, moreover, increased to 9.5 per cent, from 7.5 per cent, trailing only California and New York, according to a report from WeCount, a research project from the Society of Family Planning, which supports abortion rights.
In Tallahassee, the Planned Parenthood health centre has seen a doubling of abortion patients since the Dobbs decision. In all, the number of out-of-state patients seeking abortions has quadrupled at nine Planned Parenthood health centres along the state’s northern border and east coast.
Should a six-week abortion ban become law, access would be far more difficult.
According to data compiled by Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College, the average driving distance to the closest abortion provider in Florida is 22 miles (35 kilometres), or about half an hour. A six-week ban would make it 607 miles, or more than nine hours.
There were 54 abortion providers in Florida at the end of 2022, according to data from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco. There are only a handful of providers, by contrast, in the two other states in the Southeast where abortion remains more accessible, for now — South Carolina and North Carolina.
The six-week ban would provide exceptions for abortions to take place until 15 weeks for pregnancies that resulted from rape, incest or human trafficking, as long as the patient provides documentation such as a restraining order, medical record or police report. The 15-week ban passed last year only included exceptions for a fatal fetal abnormality or to save the life of the mother.
The new law would also prohibit doctors from prescribing medication abortions through telehealth, making Florida’s six-week ban even more restrictive than Georgia’s, according to Kaiser Family Foundation, and from dispensing the pills by mail. And it would bar state funds from being used for a person to travel outside Florida for an abortion, except for when it is a medical emergency or when federal law requires it.
To groups that oppose abortion, the anticipated six-week ban is a welcome victory.
“When the governor signs this, it is going to make a huge impact,” said Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee.
By contrast, Sarah Parker, president of Women’s Voices of Southwest Florida, a nonprofit that defends reproductive rights, started camping out on Monday night in Tallahassee as part of a weeklong protest.
“This is going to affect millions of people,” she said. “And if it’s not happening in your state, it will.”
