Advocates of the citizen-led initiative are calling out the Republican-led government’s effort to attack Amendment 4 as yet another example of the state’s attempts to mislead voters.
With roughly 60 days before the November 5 election, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration has launched a taxpayer-funded political website that critics are calling an underhanded effort to undermine Amendment 4, the citizen-led initiative that seeks to restore abortion rights after Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 6-week abortion ban went into effect in May.
The ACLU of Florida criticized the DeSantis administration’s move to disguise a political ad as a government website in order to promote false information, calling it a “desperate” attempt to spread misinformation about the citizen-led ballot initiative ahead of the November election.
“This latest move by the state is yet another example of the state disregarding the law in its attempts to mislead voters,” Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement.
A campaign of disinformation
Under a headline that reads “Don’t let the fear mongers lie to you,” the state agency’s website claims that “the framework developed by the Florida government to regulate abortion sets reasonable and common-sense guardrails for medical professionals and their facilities.”
In reality, DeSantis’ abortion ban restricts access to abortion care before many women even know they’re pregnant. And though the ban includes exceptions for fatal fetal abnormalities and to protect the life of the mother, among other provisions, some doctors in the Sunshine State say that those “guardrails” are not enough to ensure the safety of women.
Dr. Cecilia Grande, an Obstetrics & Gynecology specialist in Miami, said that the so-called guardrails only serve to tie the doctors’ hands at a potentially high cost to women.
“They say, ‘well, if the patient’s life is at risk, you can go ahead and you can induce the delivery.’ But what is ‘at risk’? Do we wait for them to be very sick, or just slightly sick? Now, we’re told to send the patient home and wait for the patient to be sick; we’re told to do malpractice,” Dr. Grande told Floricua. “The best way I can put it, it’s a human tragedy.”
“Every pregnancy is unique and requires different medical considerations and care,” added Dr. Mona Mangat, a St. Petersburg physician and Board Chair of the Committee to Protect Health Care. “As a physician, I know that when it comes to issues as personal and complicated as pregnancy, politicians are never more qualified to make health care decisions than patients and their doctors.”
RELATED: Florida doctor says 6-week abortion ban is ‘jeopardizing future of healthcare in Florida’
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration’s new site also claims that Amendment 4 “threatens women’s safety,” even though it would merely restore the previous standard of Roe v. Wade, which required abortion to be legal until fetal viability, the point at which the fetus is viable outside the uterus, which is usually around 24 weeks (or when necessary after that to protect a patient’s health, as determined by their healthcare provider).
“Amendment 4 is simple. It leaves decisions about abortion to women in consultation with their doctors, who take an oath to act in their patient’s best interests,” Jackson said.
Part of a larger effort by DeSantis to defeat Amendment 4
Pro-choice activists point out that this is not the first time the state has tried to derail the grassroots initiative. State Attorney General Ashley Moody, who opposes abortion, asked the state Supreme Court to review the wording of the amendment earlier this year, arguing that the term “viability” in the initiative can have more than one meaning. Pro-choice advocates successfully argued that viability refers to the point at which the fetus is viable outside the uterus, defeating Moody’s effort to sabotage the amendment.
In another effort to derail the amendment, a financial impact statement set to appear alongside the measure on voters’ ballots claims that multiple Florida laws could be challenged as unconstitutional if Amendment 4 was to take effect, resulting in lost tax revenue and high litigation costs. The statement will also include misleading language that says Amendment 4 “would result in significantly more abortions and fewer live births per year in Florida,” and could “require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds.”
A Leon County circuit judge ruled the statement needs to be revised, finding it “inaccurate, ambiguous, misleading, unclear and confusing,” but was overruled by the state Supreme Court.
More recently, DeSantis’ deputy secretary of state asked supervisors in Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach, and Osceola counties to gather nearly 36,000 signatures that were already deemed valid earlier this year, in an effort to find petition fraud.
“This is nothing more than trickery by extreme politicians who fear the will of the people,” Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, the organization leading the Amendment 4 effort, said in a statement.
DeSantis’ continued efforts to derail Amendment 4 come as surveys show abortion rights are broadly popular with Florida voters. A recent survey from KFF revealed that approximately 7 in 10 women in Florida say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
“The momentum is on our side,” Anna Hochkammer of Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, said in a statement. “And if we’re successful, women in Florida will never again have to wonder whether politicians are going to interfere with the right to make their own medical decisions.”
Amendment 4 requires 60% of voters voting “Yes” in order to pass.
RELATED: Florida’s abortion restrictions had devastating consequences for this mother
Opinion: Comstock is Trump and the GOP’s backdoor to a national abortion ban
In an op-ed, Kate Kelly highlights how the 1873 Comstock Act, passed at the behest of Anthony Comstock — a man so obsessed with abortion providers,...
‘It’s really important that we have federal protections across the board,’ pro-choice advocate says
As the fight to enshrine abortion rights in the Sunshine State's Constitution continues, a national group works to secure reproductive rights on the...
New report reveals cause of 2020 Arecibo Observatory collapse
The Committee's findings indicate that, although the fasteners had held up for decades, external forces like hurricanes exacerbated the issue. Four...
Florida’s iconic Key deer face an uncertain future as seas rise
BIG PINE KEY, Fla. (AP) — The world's only Key deer, the smallest subspecies of the white-tailed deer, are found in piney and marshy wetlands...