Deborah defines what she had to experience in Florida due to the regulation of abortion in that State as a form of torture. This woman, who prefers to hide her last name for privacy reasons, carried a child without kidneys and was sentenced to death for three eternal months after a hopeless diagnosis in the 23rd week of pregnancy. “When they handed me my newborn baby, he was already cold and blue,” the woman’s story continues with a broken voice in a video call from her home in Lakeland, in the center of the State, where she is still recovering from the impact of two hurricanes. a few weeks ago. As if the traumatic experience had not been enough, now Deborah revisits and shares her story. The goal, she is convinced, is worth it: that other women do not have to go through something similar.
Reproductive rights are the second or third issue that worries Americans most when it comes to voting, after the economy and basically tied with immigration. This is reflected in several surveys released in recent days. For women under 45, it is the most important issue. It’s not a surprise. In several States for two years it has been illegal to abort in any instance or in many others there are laws in force that, although on paper they allow it, make it practically impossible; although, in fact, the number of abortions has increased since the repeal in 2022 of the ruling that constitutionally enshrined the right to abortion in the United States, mainly due to the abortion pill method, which has also been in the sights of the judges .
On the Florida ballot, in addition to the election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to preside over the United States, voters will have the option of guaranteeing the right to abortion in the state Constitution through an amendment. Similar referendums will be on the ballots of nine other states—Arizona, Nebraska, Nevada, Maryland, New York, Missouri, Montana, Colorado and South Dakota—after seven passed laws enshrining the 2022 midterm elections. women’s reproductive rights, including the deeply Republican territories of Kansas or Kentucky. In Florida, the last few months of confrontation between the campaigns for and against the constitutional amendment, which needs 60% of the votes to move forward, have been fierce, full of accusations, falsehoods and legal disputes. In the middle of the debate are the health and freedom of hundreds of thousands of women.
It is the mud that created the Supreme Court decision — with a conservative supermajority of six to three by the three life judges appointed by Trump when he was president — that eliminated the right nationwide in 2022 by overturning a 1973 precedent known as Roe v. Wade that protected him. It’s the same reason abortion is the motivation for millions of voters across the country in this election.
Kamala Harris has made it a main focus of her campaign. In his speeches and rallies he never forgets to mention the topic. It is one of the areas on which she expresses herself best, after spending her vice presidency very involved in the matter. The Democratic candidate has said on several occasions that, if she became president, she would sign a law that would guarantee access to abortion for the country’s women at the national level. However, this situation is very unlikely. To reach that point, Democrats would need a considerable majority in Congress, something that is not within reach when polls point to a virtual tie in the legislature again. Against this backdrop, state referendums take on a greater dimension.
For his part, Donald Trump considers that his work on this matter is completed. Repealing this legal protection was one of the keys to the evangelical support it received in 2016. Now, however, the issue is an electoral hot potato, since the majority of Americans, including a good portion of Republicans, are against a absolute prohibition. The former president, on the other hand, repeats, with more than dubious veracity, that returning the power to legislate on abortion to the States “is what everyone wanted.”
In Florida, since May 1, after a year in which the abortion limit was 15 weeks of pregnancy, the Heartbeat Law, the banner of the popular Republican governor Ron DeSantis, has been in force. The legislation allows an abortion only before the sixth week of gestation—before many women even know they are pregnant—and dictates that there are exceptions for cases in which the mother’s life is in danger and for incest, rape or sex trafficking. But the conditions are so strict that they could end up preventing the practice, warns Michelle Quesada, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization that performs a third of abortions nationwide. “It’s not just abortion by choice, all services associated with abortion care are being affected.”
The weather is scary. Doctors, like gynecologist Cecilia Grande, are afraid to perform abortions, even when the mother’s health is in danger. “Now there is hypervigilance. My colleagues and I do not know to what extent it is acceptable to have an abortion. When there is an 80% chance of death? 90%?” he says in his office in south Miami. In order to provide necessary medical care legally and without risk of criminal proceedings against doctors, hospitals or patients, there must be at least two independent medical assessments that say that the woman’s life is at risk. . In many cases, hospitals ask for more to cover their backs.
The law also victimizes the pregnant woman, says Quesada, who has accompanied numerous patients on the journey to obtain an abortion. “The statute says that if you have been a victim of rape, incest or sex trafficking, you can access an abortion with documentation that certifies it. First, two out of three rape cases go unreported. Many times the abuser is someone close to them and they are afraid to report it. In addition, the police say that it can take weeks or months to get a concrete report beyond the complaint, which is not valid. So where is the exception?”
In the end, the solution that remains is to travel outside the State, to another territory that does allow abortion. The closest is North Carolina, more than 1,000 kilometers away, and there a 72-hour reflection period must be respected before proceeding. Thus, in a country where healthcare is already much more expensive than average, expenses become another obstacle to having an abortion. Planned Parenthood has helped about 700 women get abortions out of Florida since the six-week ban went into effect in May. It is not known how many have made the trip on their own.
The ban is also an obstacle to practicing their profession and protecting women, says Dr. Grande, who is part of a group of hundreds of doctors who support the campaign for abortion rights in Florida and have the same opinion as her. “Now women arrive at 16 weeks in a situation of spontaneous abortion and we can do absolutely nothing,” she says. Grande remembers a case from years ago, when she began her career in the nineties in a Catholic hospital, in which she treated a woman at 18 weeks who had an infection and managed to control it with oxytocin, a medication now also prohibited because it is used to reduce bleeding in cases of spontaneous abortion. This woman had already had numerous losses due to her incompetent cervix, so Grande applied a suture that allowed her to finally reach the 36th week of pregnancy and have her only child. “Now I would have had to wait for her to become septic to be able to treat her and she would have been infertile,” he says.
Abortion in campaign
“That’s why I wasn’t involved in politics before,” says Dr. Grande, “but now my daughter has fewer rights than my mother in Cuba before the Revolution.” When the Florida Heartbeat Law was passed, a huge collection ofsignatures led by the Floridians Protecting Freedom organization. After long months of campaigning, one million were achieved, 100,000 more than necessary to bring a question directly to the voters.
Over the past six months, the Floridians Protecting Freedom mission and other allied organizations have campaigned to restore the right under the Yes On 4 coalition. According to a campaign spokesperson, they have knocked on half a million doors, made 450,000 calls and targeted 6,250 volunteers. Furthermore, according to their most recent data, they have raised nearly 104 million dollars (about 96 million euros) from more than 47,000 donors.
On the other side they have not stood still either. There is the opposing campaign, Vote No On 4. Their main argument breaks down the text of the amendment and claims that the language is misleading. They say it does not define their key terms, such as “feasibility,” “patient health” or “health care provider.” These supposed uncertainties create loopholes that will lead to more abortions later in pregnancy than voters intend, they allege. But in Florida, constitutional amendments do not require definitions and, in any case, the indicated terms are defined in State law.
In the midst of this battle, which has included lawsuits from both sides and interference in the state government’s campaign, Florida citizens will have to speak out in favor or against the amendment in a few days. The most recent polls, published by the Public Opinion Research Laboratory of the University of North Florida, indicate that currently 60% of the state’s citizens support the amendment, a slight decrease compared to a few months ago, while a 32% are against and 8% are undecided. It’s hard to get any tighter.
One of the voters who will opt for one of the two options, and according to what he has said, is still undecided on the matter, is the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, former President Trump, a resident of Florida. Although his wife Melania has come out in favor of abortion by surprise with the publication of her memoirs, he, on the other hand, has been very calculating when it comes to showing his opinions, aware of the delicacy of an issue that could cost him the elections.
