The Florida Supreme Court last week ordered a 6-week abortion ban to go into effect May 1. In a separate decision, the court said voters will decide whether to expand and to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution (which would guarantee the right to abortion “before fetal viability,” around 23 weeks) during a referendum this November.
U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who describes members of the Florida Supreme Court as “MAGA extremists” appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, warned that from May 1 to November 5, women in Florida are going to face “nightmare scenarios,” as a result of the near-total abortion ban. (Few women realize that they’re pregnant at six weeks.)
Note: DeSantis has appointed five of the seven Florida Supreme Court justices.
Wasserman Schultz said the new ban means “after May 1, abortion care will become almost impossible to receive in Florida with almost no exceptions.” And beginning May 1, the “government, judges and politicians are going to interfere with their reproductive choices.”
Rep. @DWStweets: A 6-week abortion ban is about to take effect in Florida, before many women even know they’re pregnant. This will impact not only women in Florida, but millions across the South. Floridians will have a chance to be heard in November pic.twitter.com/jRwpaLwKnV
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 3, 2024
During an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Wasserman Schultz told the story of a woman who under Florida’s 15-week abortion ban, “was forced to carry her fetus to term and induce pregnancy while having no amniotic fluid and her baby was certain to be born without kidneys, who died 94 minutes later in her arms. [sic] That is the kind of torture that Ron DeSantis’s Supreme Court and Ron DeSantis is putting women through in the state.”
Rep. @DWStweets: The MAGA extremist Florida Supreme Court established a near-total abortion ban that will go into effect. Women are going to face nightmare scenarios. Ron DeSantis is putting women through torture. Voters will go to the polls to protect their reproductive rights pic.twitter.com/dvhz9CIP5M
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 6, 2024
Note: The Florida Supreme Court decision doesn’t just affect women in Florida: many women from Southern states with tighter restrictions on abortion including Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, have traveled to Florida for the procedure since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Wasserman Schultz says she is hopeful: “The people of Florida loudly and overwhelmingly fought back by following our law to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot for voters to limit government interference with this deeply personal choice of abortion.” The abortion rights referendum will need 60 percent approval to pass.