The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

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Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

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Abortion Sep 12

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Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

Hadley Duvall says in voiceover that she’s never slept a full night in her life — her stepfather first started abusing her when she was five years old, and impregnated her when she was 12. As she speaks, images of Duvall as a child flash on the screen. The soundtrack of the ad is a song by Billie Eilish, who endorsed the vice president on Tuesday.

“I just remember thinking I have to get out of my skin. I can’t be me right now. Like, this can’t be it,” Duvall says. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all. But I had options.”

The ad is part of a continued push by the Harris campaign to highlight the growing consequences of the fall of Roe, including that some states have abortion restrictions with no exceptions for rape or incest. Women in some states are suffering increasingly perilous medical care and the first reported instance of a woman dying from delayed reproductive care surfaced this week. Harris lays the blame squarely on Republican nominee Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

Duvall blames Trump, too.

“Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest,” she says in the ad. “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”

During the presidential debate on Sept. 10, Trump repeatedly took credit for appointing the three Supreme Court justices and leaned heavily on his catchall response to questions on abortion rights, saying the issue should be left up to the states. He said he would not sign a national abortion ban.

“I’m not signing a ban,” he said, adding that “there is no reason to sign the ban.”

But he also repeatedly declined to say whether he would veto such a ban if he were elected again — a question that has lingered as the Republican nominee has shifted his stances on the crucial election issue.

Duvall of Owensboro, Kentucky, first told her story publicly last fall in a campaign ad for the governor’s race in her home state supporting Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. Duvall’s stepfather was convicted of rape and is in prison; she miscarried.

Beshear won reelection, and Democrats have said Duvall’s ad was a strong motivator, particularly for rural, male voters who had previously voted for Trump.

Duvall is also touring the country to campaign for Harris along with other women who have been telling their personal stories since the fall of Roe, joining Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro last week.

Among them is Amendment 4, which would make abortion under certain circumstances a state constitutional right. 

Here, we break down Amendment 4, its impacts and what Florida currently allows. 

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What is it?

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary you will see on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

A “yes” vote supports adding the language to the Florida Constitution’s Declaration of Rights. A “no” vote opposes adding that amendment. 

“Viability” means “the capability of a fetus to survive outside the uterus,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The patient’s healthcare provider would determine whether the fetus is viable, though it is generally around the 24-week mark, according to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. 

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

Where do things stand now?

Florida has banned abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. There are some exceptions, including in the case that the woman’s life is in danger, or that she provides evidence that the pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or human trafficking. 

Fourteen states have banned abortion in most or all circumstances, according to the New York Times. Abortion is legal in 28 states and Washington, D.C., mostly until viability.  

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which offered federal abortion protections, in June 2022, meaning access to the procedure now varies from state to state.

The White House, however, says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s health, despite state bans. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the issue.

How many votes are needed for Amendment 4 to pass?

At least 60 percent of voters must vote yes for Amendment 4 to pass.

Current impact

There is some evidence to suggest that abortion bans complicate pregnancy care, as physicians worry about violating bans and subsequent criminal charges. An Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations found that more than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022.

Two women – one in Florida and one in Texas – were left to miscarry in public restrooms. In Arkansas, a woman went into septic shock and her fetus died after an emergency room sent her home. At least four other women with ectopic pregnancies had trouble getting any treatment, including one California woman who needed a blood transfusion after she sat for nine hours in an emergency waiting room.

They’re pushing for people to vote ‘yes’ on Amendment 4, which would allow abortion access in the Sunshine State.

It would specifically allow the procedure to remain legal until the fetus is viable, which would be decided by a patient’s health care provider.

Local leaders such as Miami-Dade County’s Mayor – as well as residents of all ages – came out to echo the calls for change.

“When you see people coming together and when you see the impact that it has on people, it spreads awareness of issues,” a woman told NBC6.

“The right to choose for one’s body belongs to the person, who is going to make that choice – not to the government,” a man who attended the rally said.

Meanwhile, groups like Florida Right to Life are fighting Amendment 4, saying they want to protect the sanctity of life from conception, and are urging people to vote ‘no’ in November.

The study by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion access, suggests that Florida clinics, abortion funds and support networks were better prepared than their counterparts in other states to help women get abortions legally by detecting pregnancies earlier and using out-of-state telehealth pill prescriptions.

It’s the latest report to underscore that women are still finding ways to end their pregnancies despite two years of bans and restrictions in Republican-controlled states since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a nationwide right to abortion. Previous studies have found that the number of abortions nationally has risen slightly compared with the period before that ruling.

“An infrastructure of abortion funds and support organizations really has come into play to get patients to services as quickly as they can,” Guttmacher data scientist Isaac Maddow-Zimet said of the Florida findings.

Using a survey of brick-and-mortar abortion facilities as well as online prescribers, Guttmacher estimates that there were 30% fewer abortions in the state in May than there were on average for the first three months of the year, before an increase in abortions in April ahead of the new ban taking effect. In June, the number was slightly lower, at 35% fewer.

When similar bans kicked elsewhere, the number of monthly abortions fell more dramatically. It dropped by 45% in Georgia after its law took effect in November 2022, by nearly 80% in South Carolina, where it took hold in August 2023, and by about 50% in Texas after its law took effect in September 2021. Texas has since implemented a near-total ban on abortion. Iowa also has a six-week ban, but enforcement began only in July.

The availability of legally prescribed abortion pills in Florida and other states with bans is because some states with Democrats in charge of the governments have passed laws that allow providers to prescribe the pills via telehealth to patients in states with bans. One study found that by March — before the Florida ban took effect — the pills prescribed by telehealth providers in those states accounted for about one-tenth of the nation’s abortions.

The statutes, known as shield laws, have not yet faced a major test in court.

The Guttmacher survey includes those out-of-state prescriptions, but it doesn’t include people who received abortions outside of the formal medical system, such as by obtaining pills without a prescription.

Florida’s size and geography make it an important part of the abortion landscape. After Roe fell, strict bans — many of them barring abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with narrow exceptions — were implemented in most Republican-led states, including most of those in the South.

Florida had a new ban, too, but it was far more forgiving than most: It prohibited abortion after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy in most cases. Women from nearby states who could not legally obtain an abortion at home often traveled to Florida to get one. In 2023, about 1 in 11 abortions in Florida was for a patient who traveled from out of state, according to state data.

The six-week ban was adopted in 2023, and the state’s Supreme Court ruled on April 1 that enforcement could start in one month.

Bans everywhere affect people seeking abortions, but Florida has some added implications.

As the third-most populous state, it has more abortion-seekers than nearly anywhere else. And because of its geography, it is an 11-hour drive from Miami to the closest state that allows abortions later in a pregnancy, North Carolina. Even then, North Carolina has a 72-hour waiting period after a patient makes an in-person appointment before an abortion can proceed, making that an impractical destination for many Florida women, including those who might struggle to get enough time off work or arrange for several days’ of child care.

Michelle Quesada, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida, said the group’s clinics have been prioritizing getting patients appointments fast, especially if they’re close to the six-week cutoff, and cross-trained staff on ultrasounds to provide gestational dating as quickly as possible.

But she said there are still abortion seekers who are turned away. About 600 abortion seekers at the five abortion clinics in her group have gone to other states with the help of Planned Parenthood navigators. And she said that about 50 patients a week choose to self-navigate, possibly continuing a pregnancy they don’t want or obtaining an abortion outside a clinic.

She said one impact may be that some patients rush to have abortions that they may not have had with more time to think through their pregnancy options.

“Now you have patients coming to us at five weeks, five days,” she said, “and they literally have 24 hours to decide.”

Kelly Flynn, president and CEO of A Women’s Choice, which has abortion clinics in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, said the number of abortions at her Jacksonville, Florida, clinic has dropped by at least half since the ban took effect — though those patients are often seen by the organization’s other clinics.

“This ban has been devastating and cruel for patients who have desperately needed access to safe abortion care,” she said. And Flynn said the abortion funds that help with travel logistics and funding are finding that they’re not as flush with donations as they were after Roe was overturned.

Florida is one of nine states where voters in November will decide whether to add the right to abortion to their state constitution. In Florida, the proposed amendment would require 60% support to pass.

The lawsuit, filed in Leon County circuit court by attorneys for the Floridians Protecting Freedom committee, seeks a temporary injunction to prevent the agency from continuing to disseminate the information online and through television and radio ads.

“In educating the electorate about the purpose and ramifications of a proposed constitutional amendment, the government cannot do so in a manner that is inaccurate, misleading, abusive, or fraudulent,” the lawsuit said. “AHCA’s actions regarding Amendment 4 (the abortion rights amendment) … have been inaccurate, misleading, abusive and fraudulent.”

The lawsuit alleges that the agency has violated Floridians Protecting Freedom’s right to propose constitutional amendments and that state law prevents officials from participating in political advocacy.

“Under the guise of providing ‘facts’ to the public, the website contains harmful statements that are fundamentally misleading at best, if not outright false,” the lawsuit said. “It includes multiple statements that lead only to the conclusion that AHCA is using its official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election, or to influence votes and affect the result of the decision on Amendment 4.”

But Gov. Ron DeSantis this week defended the agency’s information, describing it as “above board” and likening it to public-service announcements by other government agencies.

“You know, we have resources to do public-service announcements across a wide variety of fronts. That goes to the Department of Transportation, for example, on safe driving,” DeSantis said Monday during an appearance in Miami Lakes. “It’s being used by the AHCA agency to basically provide people with accurate information. And I think that that’s something that’s really important, because, quite frankly, a lot of people don’t usually get that in the normal (information) bloodstream. So, everything that’s put out is factual. It’s not electioneering.”

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DeSantis is helping lead efforts to defeat the proposed constitutional amendment, which comes after the Legislature last year passed a law to prevent abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. In part, the proposed amendment says, no ”law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” 

The website targeted in the lawsuit includes statements such as, “Current Florida Law Protects Women, Amendment 4 Threatens Women’s Safety.”

Also, for example, it takes issue with wording of the amendment, such as the use of the term “healthcare provider,” which it contends “could include a wide range of professionals connected to healthcare which might differ from the current requirement that these important decisions be made only by a physician.”

“Here’s the truth: The Florida Legislature will lose the ability to protect basic, common-sense health care regulations due to these open-ended and arbitrary terms,” the website says.

But the lawsuit disputed such arguments and quoted a decision by the Florida Supreme Court that signed off on the ballot proposal’s wording.

“The Florida Supreme Court rejected the claim that Amendment 4 was deceptive or misleading, finding that ‘the ballot title and summary fairly inform voters, in clear and unambiguous language, of the chief purpose of the amendment and they are not misleading,’” wrote attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Southern Legal Counsel, who are representing Floridians Protecting Freedom.

An emergency motion for a temporary injunction filed with the lawsuit alleged that the state has “unlawfully weaponized taxpayer resources” to oppose the amendment.

“Through this website, AHCA disparages Amendment 4 and Floridians Protecting Freedom as its sponsor, alleging fearmongering and lying,” the motion said. “AHCA presents voters with false information about Amendment 4 and current law and creates a sense of urgency that ‘Current Law Protects Women. Amendment 4 Threatens Women’s Safety,’ that Amendment 4 will ‘lead to unregulated and unsafe abortions,’ and ‘We must keep Florida from becoming an abortion tourism destination state.’ Voters can only be left with the impression that this state agency is advising them to vote no on Amendment 4.” 

But in an email Monday, the agency’s communications office said AHCA was providing facts and information to Floridians.

“Part of the agency’s mission is to provide information and transparency to Floridians on the quality of care they receive,” the email said. “Our new transparency page serves to educate Floridians on the state’s current abortion laws and provide information on a proposed policy change that would impact care across the state.”

The lawsuit came two days after Palm Beach County attorney Adam Richardson filed a case at the Florida Supreme Court about the agency information. Richardson asked the Supreme Court to issue what is known as a writ of quo warranto to Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Jason Weida, DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody “forbidding them from misusing or abusing their offices to interfere with the election for Amendment 4, and to unravel whatever actions they have already taken to do so.”

Critics say they’re the latest efforts by Florida’s Republican elected officials to leverage state resources to try to block the abortion rights measure, moves which some Democratic officials argue could violate state laws against voter intimidation.

“Ron (DeSantis) has repeatedly used state power to interfere with a citizen-led process to get reproductive freedom on the ballot,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried told reporters on Monday. “This is their latest desperate attempt before Election Day.”

The ballot initiative known as Amendment 4 would enshrine abortion rights in Florida law. If approved by 60% of voters, the procedure would remain legal until the fetus is viable, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.

Isaac Menasche, one of nearly a million people who signed the petition to get the measure on the ballot, said a law enforcement officer knocked on his door last week in Lee County in southwest Florida to ask him about signing it.

The officer said the questioning was part of an investigation into alleged petition fraud, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

“I’m not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion,” Menasche told the newspaper. “I just felt strongly, and I took the opportunity when the person asked me to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll sign that petition.’”

Critics say the investigation is a brazen attempt to intimidate voters in the country’s third-largest state from protecting access to abortion — and the latest in a series of efforts by the governor’s administration to target Amendment 4.

“Amendment 4 was placed on the ballot by nearly one million Floridians around the state and across party lines who believe that people, not politicians, deserve the freedom to make their own health care decisions,” Lauren Brenzel, the director of the Yes on 4 campaign, said in an email. “But the State will stop at nothing to keep in place their near-total abortion ban.”

Florida law currently bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant.

Speaking at a press event Monday in South Florida, DeSantis defended police visiting the homes of petition signers, and a separate move by a state health care agency to create a website targeting the ballot amendment, saying both are aimed at making sure November’s vote is fair.

DeSantis signed a law in 2022 creating a state police force dedicated to investigating voter fraud and elections crimes. Voter fraud is rare, typically occurs in isolated instances and is generally detected.

He said elections police are going to the homes of people who signed the petitions that got Amendment 4 on the ballot not to intimidate them, but because questions have been raised about the legitimacy of the signatures. He said the police have found evidence that some of the supposed signatures were from dead people.

“Anyone who submitted a petition that is a valid voter, that is totally within their rights to do it,” DeSantis said. “We are not investigating that. What they are investigating is fraudulent petitions. We know that this group did submit on behalf of dead people.”

A deadline in state law to challenge the validity of the signatures has long passed, but county-level election administrators across Florida say they have been receiving requests from state officials to turn over verified petition signatures as part of a state probe.

Mary Jane Arrington, a Democrat who has served as the Supervisor of Elections in Osceola County in central Florida for 16 years, told The Associated Press she had never received a request like this one before.

Arrington said she didn’t know what to make of the state’s request to review signatures her office had already verified.

“These are ones that we deemed the petition valid, both in completeness and in their signature matching what we had on file for the voter,” Arrington said. “They said they were investigating … signature petition fraud.”

The state’s elections crime unit has opened more than 40 investigations into paid petition gathers working for the Amendment 4 campaign, according to a letter from Deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay outlining allegedly fraudulent petitions in Palm Beach County that was shared with the AP.

Judges have tossed out previous criminal cases brought by the controversial Office of Election Crimes and Security.

Meanwhile, a state health care agency launched a new website last week targeting Amendment 4, with a landing page proclaiming that “Florida is Protecting Life” and warning “Don’t let the fearmongers lie to you.”

DeSantis said the page created by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration is being paid through a budget the department has to do public service announcements. He said the page is not political but is giving Floridians “factual information” about the amendment.

“Everything that is put out is factual. It is not electioneering,” DeSantis said at the news conference, adding, “I am glad they are doing it.”

Florida is one of nine states where measures to protect abortion access have qualified to go before voters in 2024.

Florida Republicans have been using various other strategies to thwart the state abortion ballot measure. Republican Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody attempted to use the state Supreme Court to keep abortion off the ballot. Later, abortion rights advocates criticized a financial impact statement meant to be placed on the ballot beside the proposed amendment as an attempt to mislead voters. The state Supreme Court ruled in August to allow the language to remain on the ballot.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups and GOP allies across the country are using an array of strategies to counter proposed ballot initiatives aiming to protect reproductive rights. These tactics have included legislative pushes for competing ballot measures that could confuse voters and monthslong delays caused by lawsuits over ballot initiative language.

Nebraskans, for example, are awaiting rulings from the state Supreme Court on three lawsuits aimed at keeping abortion off the ballot. And the Missouri Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Tuesday in an appeal of a lower court ruling that an abortion rights campaign did not meet legal requirements to qualify for the November ballot. ___

This story was first published on Sep. 9, 2024. It was updated on Sep. 10, 2024 to correct that the letter outlining allegedly fraudulent petitions was about Palm Beach County, not to Palm Beach County.

___

Associated Press writers Christine Fernando in Chicago, Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia, and Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale contributed to this report.

___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration unveiled a new page this week that warns against the citizen-led initiative aiming to legalize abortion up until viability.

The webpage reads: “Florida is protecting life. Don’t let the fearmongers lie to you.”

“It is the use of state resources for a political campaign,” said Bacardi Jackson, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida. “While it may not specifically say vote no, it is mere propaganda and it is also misinformation that’s being peddled to voters.”

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The state agency said in a statement the new page serves to educate Floridians on the state’s current abortion laws and proposed policy changes that would impact care across the state.

The ACLU calls the move disturbing and an abuse of power.

“Instead of going through the proper political process, where each side raises money and garners support, the government is stepping in with this bully platform with this misinformation and undermining a political process that should be more fair than this,” Jackson said.

Charles Zelden, a political science professor at Nova Southeastern University, says it is unusual and improper for a state agency to be advocating in such a way.

“It’s one thing if a member of the state legislature or the governor takes the stance. It’s another thing when it’s the health department,” he said. “You begin to question whether this is a valid use of their authority to try and convince people to vote against an amendment.”

Zelden says he’s not sure what the Health Care Administration is doing is illegal.

The ACLU says it’s looking at whether using taxpayer dollars for political campaigns is lawful and if there are any actions they can take.

Voters in the swing states (Arizona and Nevada), blue-leaning states (Colorado, Maryland and New York) and red-leaning states (Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota) will have the ability to directly decide the future of abortion access this fall. Among the organizers who submitted signatures to qualify an abortion rights amendment for this year’s ballot, only those in Arkansas fell short.

These 10 initiatives will be the latest to pursue enshrining abortion access in a state’s constitution since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Here is what the proposed amendments would do if passed — and how they would impact current abortion care laws in those states.

Arizona

The proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in this crucial southwestern battleground would create a “fundamental right” to an abortion up until fetal viability, or about the 24th week of pregnancy. After that point, the measure would bar the state from restricting abortion in situations when the health or the life of the pregnant person is at risk, according to the treating health care professional.

Under current Arizona law, abortion is legal up until the 15th week of pregnancy, with an exception after that to save the woman’s life and no exceptions after that for rape or incest. If voters approve the proposed ballot measure in November, it would effectively undo the 15-week ban. It needs a simple majority of support to pass.

Colorado

The proposed amendment in Colorado would declare formally that “the right to abortion is hereby recognized” and that “government shall not deny, impede or discriminate against the exercise of that right.”

It also explicitly states that the government may not prohibit health insurance coverage for abortion, including insurance plans for public employees and publicly funded insurance plans. That provision would effectively undo a 1984 law that barred people from using their health insurance to pay for abortion care.

The ballot measure in Colorado — where there are no laws restricting abortion and no gestational limits at all for women seeking an abortion — is intended to formally enshrine those rights, a move organizers say is crucial to prevent lawmakers from having any future opportunity to undo them.

To pass in November, the measure requires the support of 55% of voters under state law, not just a simple majority.

Florida

The state’s ballot initiative would bar restrictions on abortion before fetal viability and would include exceptions past that point for “the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Passage of the amendment would effectively undo the state’s six-week ban on abortion, which includes exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the woman.

Under Florida law, the measure must receive the support of 60% of voters in November, rather than a simple majority, to pass.

Maryland

Lawmakers, who control the amendment process in Maryland rather than citizens, voted to place a measure on the ballot that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

It would add language to guaranteeing the right to “to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end one’s own pregnancy.”

Abortion is already legal in the state through fetal viability, with exceptions afterward when the woman’s life or health is at risk, or when a fetal anomaly is detected. A simple majority is needed for passage.

Missouri 

Missouri’s amendment would enshrine language in the state constitution to protect abortion rights up until fetal viability, with exceptions after that point for the life and health of the mother.

The amendment specifically states that the government “shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” which the amendment defines as all decisions related to reproductive health care, explicitly including “birth control,” “abortion care” and “miscarriage care” — up until fetal viability. The proposal also deems any “denial, interference, delay or restriction” of such care as “invalid.”

After that point, the government may regulate abortion except in cases where a treating health care professional has judged the “life or physical or mental health” of the mother to be at risk.

At the same time, the amendment would allow lawmakers and state officials to restrict or limit abortion rights in situations in which doing so “is for the limited purpose and has the limited effect of improving or maintaining the health of a person seeking care, is consistent with widely accepted clinical standards of practice and evidence-based medicine, and does not infringe on that person’s autonomous decision-making.”

Missouri currently has one of the strictest abortion bans in the U.S. in place, with exceptions to protect the life of the mother and for medical emergencies. If the amendment were to pass, it would effectively undo that law. A simple majority is needed for passage.

Montana

The ballot measure in Montana would amend the state constitution to provide a right to “make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion.” It would also “prohibit the government from denying or burdening the right to abortion before fetal viability,” and  “prohibit the government from denying or burdening access to an abortion when a treating healthcare professional determines it is medically indicated to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

Abortion is currently legal in Montana until fetal viability, so enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution would serve to make it more difficult for lawmakers to undo current protections in the future. A simple majority is needed for passage.

Nebraska

In Nebraska, two dueling constitutional amendments will appear on the November ballot.

One of the ballot measures, known as “Protect the Right to Abortion,” would amend the state’s constitution to state that “all persons shall have a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability, or when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient.”

The other, called “Protect Women and Children,” bars abortions in the second and third trimesters, except in the case of a medical emergency or when the pregnancy is a result of sexual assault or incest.

Nebraska law currently bans abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest and saving the mother’s life. The pro-abortion rights measure would effectively undo that law, while the other would basically codify the law in the state constitution.

For a ballot measure to pass in Nebraska, it needs to receive a majority of the vote and at least 35% of the total votes cast in the election in favor of it. If both amendments pass, the one with the most votes prevails.

Nevada

In Nevada, abortion is already legal until the 24th week of pregnancy. But fearing that such rights could be undone in the future, reproductive rights advocates succeeded in placing a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would enshrine similar language, protecting abortion rights up until fetal viability.

Under state law, even if the measure passes in November, voters would need to approve it again in 2026 before the Nevada constitution is formally amended.

New York

As in Maryland, lawmakers, not citizens, control the amendment process in New York. State legislators voted to put a measure on the ballot that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

The Equal Protection of Law Amendment doesn’t actually explicitly mention abortion, but would enshrine rights in the state constitution designed to protect against anything the government does to affect a person’s “pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”

In New York, abortion is legal up to around the 24th week of pregnancy. Passage of the proposal — which requires a simple majority — would effectively cement those projections constitutionally. 

South Dakota

The proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in South Dakota would make abortion legal in all situations in the first trimester of pregnancy. It would allow “regulation” by the state of abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy, but such regulation “must be reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.” 

The amendment would allow “regulation or prohibition” by the state in the third trimester, except in cases when a physician has determined that the care would be necessary to “preserve the life or health” of the woman.

If it passes, the amendment would effectively undo the state’s near-total ban on abortion, which snapped back into effect after Roe v. Wade was struck down in 2022. The law, which abortion advocates say is among the harshest in the U.S., prohibits all abortions except when necessary to save the woman’s life.

The ballot measure will need to win a simple majority to pass.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.

When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection intended to end the pregnancy. But it was too late. The fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube would rupture it, destroying part of her reproductive system.

That’s according to a complaint Thurman and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed last week asking the government to investigate whether the hospital violated a federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in February 2023.

“I was left to flail,” Thurman said. “It was nothing short of being misled.”

Even as the Biden administration publicly warned hospitals to treat pregnant patients in emergencies, facilities continue to violate the federal law. The issue became a focus for the administration following reports of women being improperly treated in emergency rooms after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago.

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More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022, an Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations has found.

Two women – one in Florida and one in Texas – were left to miscarry in public restrooms. In Arkansas, a woman went into septic shock and her fetus died after an emergency room sent her home. At least four other women with ectopic pregnancies had trouble getting any treatment, including one California woman who needed a blood transfusion after she sat for nine hours in an emergency waiting room.

The White House says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s health, despite state bans. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the issue.

In Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years of prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion, medical and legal experts say the law is complicating decision-making around emergency pregnancy care.

Although the state law says termination of ectopic pregnancies is not considered abortion, the draconian penalties scare Texas doctors from treating those patients, the Center for Reproductive Rights argues.

“As fearful as hospitals and doctors are of running afoul of these state abortion bans, they also need to be concerned about running afoul of federal law,” said Marc Hearron, a center attorney. Hospitals face a federal investigation, hefty penalties and threats to their Medicare funding if they break the federal law.

The organization filed two complaints last week with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service alleging that different Texas emergency rooms failed to treat two patients, including Thurman, with ectopic pregnancies.

Another complaint says Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz, 25, lost a fallopian tube and most of an ovary after an Arlington, Texas, hospital sent her home without treating her ectopic pregnancy, even after a doctor said discharge was “not in her best interest.”

“The doctors knew I needed an abortion, but these bans are making it nearly impossible to get basic emergency healthcare,” she said in a statement. “I’m filing this complaint because women like me deserve justice and accountability from those that hurt us.”

Conclusively diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy can be difficult. Doctors cannot always find the pregnancy’s location on an ultrasound, three separate doctors consulted for this article explained. Hormone levels, bleeding, a positive pregnancy test and ultrasound of an empty uterus all indicate an ectopic pregnancy.

“You can’t be 100% — that’s the tricky part,” said Kate Arnold, an OB-GYN in Washington. “They’re literally time bombs. It’s a pregnancy growing in this thing that can only grow so much.”

Texas Right to Life Director John Seago said the state law clearly protects doctors from prosecution if they terminate ectopic pregnancies, even if a doctor “makes a mistake” in diagnosing it.

“Sending a woman back home is completely unnecessary, completely dangerous,” Seago said.

But the state law has “absolutely” made doctors afraid of treating pregnant patients, said Hannah Gordon, an emergency medicine physician who worked in a Dallas hospital until last year.

“It’s going to force doctors to start creating questionable scenarios for patients, even if it’s very dangerous,” said Gordon. She left Texas hoping to become pregnant and worried about the care she’d get there.

Gordon recalled a pregnant patient at her Dallas emergency room who had signs of an ectopic pregnancy. Because OB-GYNs said they couldn’t definitively diagnose the problem, they waited to end the pregnancy until she came back the next day.

“It left a bad taste in my mouth,” Gordon said.

In Thurman’s case, when she returned to Ascension Seton Williamson a third time, her OB-GYN told her she’d need surgery to remove the fallopian tube, which had ruptured. Thurman, still heavily bleeding, balked. Losing the tube would jeopardize her fertility.

But her doctor told her she risked death if she waited any longer.

“She came in and she’s like, you’re either going to have to have a blood transfusion, or you’re going to have to have surgery or you’re going to bleed out,” Thurman said, through tears. “That’s when I just kind of was like, “oh my God, I’m, I’m dying.”

Ascension Seton Williamson declined to comment on Thurman’s case, but said in a statement the hospital “is committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.”

In Florida, a 15-week pregnant woman leaked amniotic fluid for an hour in Broward Health Coral Springs’ emergency wait room, according to federal documents. An ultrasound revealed the patient had no amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus, a dangerous situation that can cause serious infection.

The woman miscarried in a public bathroom that day, after the emergency room doctor listed her condition as “improved” and discharged her, without consulting the hospital’s OB-GYN.

Emergency crews rushed her to another hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator and discharged after six days.

Abortions after 15 weeks were banned in Florida at the time. Broward Health Coral Springs’ obstetrics medical director told an investigator that inducing labor for anyone who presents with pre-viable premature rupture of membranes is “the standard of care, has been a while, regardless of heartbeat, due to the risk to the mother.”

The hospital declined to comment or share its policies with the AP.

In another Florida case, a doctor admitted state law had complicated emergency pregnancy care.

“Because of the new laws … staff cannot intervene unless there is a danger to the patient’s health,” a doctor at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, told an investigator who was probing the hospital’s failure to offer an abortion to a pregnant woman whose water broke at 15 weeks, well before the fetus could survive.

Serious violations that jeopardized a mother or her fetus’ health occurred in states with and without abortion bans, the AP’s review found.

In interviews with investigators, two short-staffed hospitals – in Idaho and Washington – admitted to routinely directing pregnant patients to drive to other hospitals.

A pregnant patient at a Bakersfield, California, emergency room was quickly triaged, but staff failed to realize the urgency of her condition, a uterine rupture. The delay, an investigator concluded, may have contributed to the baby’s death.

Doctors at emergency rooms in California, Nebraska, Arkansas and South Carolina failed to check for fetal heartbeats or discharged patients who were in active labor, leaving them to deliver at home or in ambulances, according to the documents.

Nursing and doctor shortages that have plagued hospitals since the onset of COVID-19, trouble staffing ultrasounds around-the-clock, and new abortion laws are making the emergency room a dangerous place for pregnant women, warned Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official.

“It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” she said.

The data, posted on the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration website, showed 40,499 abortions reported this year as of Aug. 1. That was up from a total of 36,221 reported at the beginning of July and 32.081 reported at the beginning of June.

The 4,278-abortion increase reported Aug. 1 and the 4,140-abortion increase reported July 1 are significantly lower than increases in previous months and during comparable periods last year. The six-week abortion law took effect May 1.

For example, the total in a report issued at the beginning of June represented a 9,672-abortion increase over the total included in a May 1 report.

Similarly, the May 1 total reflected a 7,674-abortion increase over the total included in an April 1 report. And the April 1 report reflected a 6,277-abortion increase over the total included in a March 2 report.

Abortion clinics are required to submit reports to the Agency for Health Care Administration within 30 days after the end of each month. Lags in reporting made it somewhat unclear when the six-week abortion limit started affecting the totals.

But the July 1 and Aug. 1 reports offer a two-month window showing reduced numbers of abortions. As another illustration, a report issued at the beginning of August 2023 showed a 6,231-abortion increase from roughly a month earlier — 31 percent higher than the 4,278-abortion increase during the comparable period this year.

Of the overall total of 40,499 abortions reported this year as of Aug. 1, 37,551 were in the first trimester of pregnancy, 2,945 were in the second trimester and three were in the trimester, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration. Two of the third-trimester abortions were categorized as being performed “due to fatal fetal abnormality,” while the other was categorized as “due to serious fetal genetic defect, deformity or abnormality.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved the six-week abortion limit in 2023 after passing a 15-week limit in 2022. The state Supreme Court on April 1 rejected a constitutional challenge by abortion-rights supporters to the 15-week limit.

That ruling also had the effect of allowing the six-week limit to take effect May 1.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also allowed a proposed abortion-rights constitutional amendment to go on the November ballot, setting up perhaps the state’s biggest political fight of 2024. Abortion-rights supporters have turned to ballot initiatives in Florida and other states after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and left abortion issues to be decided in states.

The proposed Florida amendment says, in part, that no “law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” It would need approval from 60 percent of voters to pass.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

On Thursday, Minnesota’s Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan toured the Whole Woman’s Health of Minnesota, a nonprofit abortion clinic in the city of Bloomington. She welcomed Iowa residents who were seeking abortions after the state’s new restrictions take effect.

Previously, abortion was legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in Iowa. Last July, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a new ban on the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, which is often before women know they are pregnant. There are limited exceptions in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality or when the life of the mother is in danger.

Sarah Traxler, an OB-GYN based in Minnesota and the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said Iowa’s law could have ripple effects throughout the region.

“When the Dobbs decision came down, many of the patients coming to Iowa were from Missouri,” Traxler said in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio. “This is going to have resounding impacts on the region itself, especially the Midwest and the South.”

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The Iowa Supreme Court reiterated in June that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in the state and ordered a hold on the law to be lifted. The district court judge’s orders last week set July 29 as the first day of enforcement.

Across the country, the state of abortion access has being changing ever since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Trigger laws immediately went into effect, new restrictions were passed, court battles put those on hold and in some places, there was expanded access.

In states with restrictions, the main abortion options are getting pills by mail or underground networks and traveling, vastly driving up demand in states with more access.

Whole Woman’s Health of Minnesota has served patients from South Dakota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Florida and Arkansas over the past year. Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of the clinic, said she expects to see an increase in patient demand after Iowa’s restrictions take effect.

Flanagan said Minnesota would remain committed to serving people traveling from other states seeking abortion care.

“If you’re afraid, come to Minnesota,” Flanagan said. “We’ve got you.”

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal, however, raised the possibility that Floridians Protecting Freedom, a political committee sponsoring the proposed constitutional amendment, could launch a new legal challenge to the revised statement — and that the state could reiterate its arguments that a circuit judge doesn’t have authority to decide such cases.

“To the extent that appellees (Floridians Protecting Freedom) may wish to raise new claims about the revised financial impact statement, they may do so in a separate proceeding,” said Monday’s ruling shared by Judges Stephanie Ray, Ross Bilbrey and Susan Kelsey. “Appellants (state officials) can again raise their arguments concerning the circuit court’s lack of jurisdiction in a case where there is an actual controversy presented.”

In briefs filed last week, lawyers for Floridians Protecting Freedom and the state argued the appeal was not moot. Floridians Protecting Freedom also made clear it will challenge the revised statement, which it contends is politicized and inaccurate.

“For its part, the sponsor is committed to taking every legal action available to it, including filing a new lawsuit if necessary, to vindicate its legal right to a clear and unambiguous presentation of its amendment on the ballot,” the Floridians Protecting Freedom brief said.

Financial impact statements, which usually receive little attention, provide estimated effects of proposed constitutional amendments on government revenues and the state budget. But the abortion impact statement has become embroiled in controversy as Floridians Protecting Freedom seeks to pass an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution.

A group of economists known as the Financial Impact Estimating Conference released an initial statement for the proposed amendment in November 2023. But on April 1, the Florida Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed a six-week abortion limit to take effect.

Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a lawsuit in April arguing that the November financial-impact statement needed to be revised because it was outdated after the Supreme Court ruling. Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper agreed and ordered the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to draft a new version.

State lawyers appealed, arguing that Cooper did not have legal authority to issue such an order. Amid the appeal, however, legislative leaders directed the Financial Impact Estimating Conference to revamp the statement.

The conference finished revisions last week, but the new version drew heavy criticism from Floridians Protecting Freedom. Conference members representing Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida House engineered the changes. DeSantis and other state Republican leaders oppose the amendment.

After the revisions, the Tallahassee-based appeals court directed both sides to file briefs about whether the appeal stemming from the original version was moot. The court Monday said it declined to “exercise our jurisdiction to decide a moot question. This appeal is therefore dismissed.”

The dismissal, however, does not resolve the question about whether Cooper has the authority to review and order revisions to financial impact statements.

In their brief last week, the state’s lawyers argued the case was not moot because the legal questions about Cooper’s authority were likely to recur — including in a challenge by Floridians Protecting Freedom to the revamped statement.

“Here, it is a virtual certainty that the issue of the circuit court’s authority will recur,” the brief said. “The (amendment) sponsor has already made clear it believes the revised statement ‘remains in violation of Florida law’ and has vowed to challenge it as soon as this (appeals) court permits the sponsor to do so. And although the question need not be one that is likely to recur between the same parties, that is no doubt true here.”

The proposed constitutional amendment will appear on the ballot as Amendment 4. It says, in part, that no “law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

In part, the revised financial impact statement says there is “uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds. Litigation to resolve those and other uncertainties will result in additional costs to the state government and state courts that will negatively impact the state budget. An increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time. Because the fiscal impact of increased abortions on state and local revenues and costs cannot be estimated with precision, the total impact of the proposed amendment is indeterminate.”

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

Democrats in several states hope similar measures mobilize supporters on Election Day.

Democrats have made abortion rights a central message since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court decision establishing a nationwide right to abortion. Nevada voters in 1990 made abortion legal up to 24 weeks, but a state law is easier to pass and more vulnerable to change than the constitutional protection organizers are seeking.

Several Republican-controlled states have tightened abortion restrictions or imposed outright bans. Fourteen states ban abortions at all stages of pregnancy, while 25 allow abortions up to 24 weeks or later, with limited exceptions.

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Most states with Democratic legislatures have laws or executive orders protecting access. Voters in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont have sided with abortion rights supporters on ballot measures. Supporters of abortion rights have qualified measures for ballots in Colorado and South Dakota, and Nevada was among about nine other states where signature drives have been underway.

Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, the political action committee that organized the ballot initiative, said last month that they submitted more than 200,000 signatures. Proponents needed 102,000 valid signatures by June 26 to qualify for the ballot.

The organization held a news conference Monday, which marked two years after the Dobbs decision overturned the national right to abortion, to promote the petition and unveil a letter signed by medical professionals in support.

“We can’t take anything for granted in a post-Dobbs world and that’s why we are really doubling down on the protections we have in statute currently,” said Lindsey Harmon, the group’s president.

Separately, Republican organizers said they submitted nearly 180,000 signatures to get a measure on November’s ballot that would amend the state Constitution to require that voters show photo identification at the polls, said David Gibbs, of political action committee Repair the Vote. If counties verify just over 100,000 signatures, voters would have to pass the amendment in both 2024 and 2026 for it to take effect.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The document suggests that a 6-3 ruling from the court will reinstate a lower court’s order to allow Idaho emergency rooms to provide abortions that save a woman’s health as the broader legal case plays out.

The Justice Department had sued Idaho over its abortion law, which allows a woman to get an abortion only when her life — not her health — is at risk. Idaho doctors say they were unable to provide the stabilizing treatment the federal law requires and that is typically standard of care, prompting them to airlift at least a half-dozen pregnant patients to other states since Idaho’s law took effect in January.

But attorneys for Idaho have said their state law allows for women in dire circumstances to get an abortion and is not in conflict with the federal law.

The federal law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, requires doctors to stabilize or treat any patient who shows up at an emergency room.

Here’s a look at the history of EMTALA, what rights it provides patients and how a Supreme Court ruling might change that.

What protections does EMTALA provide patients at an ER?

The law requires emergency rooms to offer a medical exam if you turn up at their facility. The law applies to nearly all emergency rooms — any that accept Medicare funding.

Those emergency rooms are required to stabilize patients if they do have a medical emergency before discharging or transferring them. And if the ER doesn’t have the resources or staff to properly treat that patient, staff members are required to arrange a medical transfer to another hospital, after they’ve confirmed the facility can accept the patient.

So, for example, if a pregnant woman shows up at an emergency room concerned that she is in labor but there is not an OB-GYN on staff who could deliver her baby, hospital staff cannot simply direct the woman to go elsewhere.

Why was this law created?

Look to Chicago in the early 1980s.

Doctors at the city’s public hospital were confronting a huge problem: Thousands of patients, many of them Black or Latino, were arriving in very bad condition — and they were sent there by private hospitals in the city that refused to treat them. Some were gunshot victims who hadn’t been stabilized. Most of them did not have health insurance.

Chicago wasn’t alone. Doctors working in public hospitals around the country reported similar issues. Media reports, including one of a pregnant woman who delivered a stillborn baby after being turned away by two hospitals because she didn’t have insurance, intensified public pressure on politicians to act.

Congress drafted legislation with Republican Sen. David Durenberger of Minnesota saying at the time, “Americans, rich or poor, deserve access to quality health care. This question of access should be the government’s responsibility at the federal, state, and local levels.”

Then-President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, signed the bill into law in 1986.

What happens if a hospital turns away a patient?

The hospital is investigated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If they find the hospital violated a patient’s right to care, they can lose their Medicare funding, a vital source of revenue needed for most hospitals to keep their doors open.

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Usually, however, the federal government issues fines when a hospital violates EMTALA. They can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Why did the Supreme Court look at the law?

Since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly reminded hospitals that his administration considers an abortion part of the stabilizing care that EMTALA requires facilities to provide.

The Biden administration argues that Idaho’s law prevents ER doctors from offering an abortion if a woman needs one in a medical emergency.

But Idaho’s attorney general has pointed out that EMTALA also requires hospitals to consider the health of the “unborn child” in its treatment, too. Attorneys for Idaho have also said that there’s no conflict between the state and federal law since Idaho allows doctors to perform an abortion if the woman’s life is at stake.

What are the advocates saying?

Anti-abortion advocates argue that state laws banning abortion can coexist with the federal law that requires hospitals to stabilize pregnant patients in an emergency.

The prominent anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has called the lawsuit in Idaho a “PR stunt.”

“The EMTALA case is based on the false premise that pregnant women cannot receive emergency care under pro-life laws,” said Kelsey Pritchard, the group’s state public affairs director after the case was heard earlier this year. “It is a clear fact that pregnant women can receive miscarriage care, ectopic pregnancy care and treatment in a medical emergency in all 50 states.”

But many doctors say it’s not as clear cut as anti-abortion advocates claim.

In rare cases, a woman may risk sepsis, hemorrhaging or reproductive organ loss if a troubled pregnancy is not terminated. But Idaho’s state law forces a doctor to wait until the patient is close enough to death to end a pregnancy, doctors argue.

Doctors risk a minimum two-year imprisonment for providing an abortion if the woman’s life is not at risk.

“There’s nothing worse than feeling as a physician that you know what the patient needs and you can’t get it for them,” Dr. Jessica Kroll, the president of the Idaho American College of Emergency Physicians, told reporters during a press conference early this month.

The analysis out of Johns Hopkins University is the latest research to find higher infant mortality rates in states with abortion restrictions.

The researchers looked at how many infants died before their first birthday after Texas adopted its abortion ban in September 2021. They compared infant deaths in Texas to those in 28 states — some also with restrictions. The researchers calculated that there were 216 more deaths in Texas than expected between March and December the next year.

In Texas, the 2022 mortality rate for infants went up 8% to 5.75 per 1,000 births, compared to a 2% increase in the rest of the U.S., according to the study in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Among causes of deaths, birth defects showed a 23% increase, compared to a decrease of about 3% in the rest of the U.S. The Texas law blocks abortions after the detection of cardiac activity, usually five or six weeks into pregnancy, well before tests are done to detect fetal abnormalities.

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“I think these findings make clear the potentially devastating consequences that abortion bans can have,” said co-author Suzanne Bell, a fertility researcher.

Doctors have argued that the law is too restrictive toward women who face pregnancy complications, though the state’s Supreme Court last month rejected a case that sought to weaken it.

Infant deaths are relatively rare, Bell said, so the team was a bit surprised by the findings. Because of the small numbers, the researchers could not parse out the rates for different populations, for example, to see if rates were rising more for certain races or socioeconomic groups.

But the results did not come as a surprise to Tiffany Green, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist and population health scientist who studies the consequences of racial inequities on reproductive health. She said the results were in line with earlier research on racial disparities in infant mortality rates due to state differences in Medicaid funding for abortions. Many of the people getting abortions are vulnerable to pregnancy complications, said Green, who was not part of the research.

Stephen Chasen, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist with Weill Cornell Medicine, said abortion restrictions have other consequences. Chasen, who had no role in the research, said people who carry out pregnancies with fetal anomalies need extra support, education and specialized medical care for the mother and newborn — all of which require resources

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The request has been ignored by the Republican lawmakers who have supermajority control in the Legislature and banned abortions in the state in 2022, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to the procedure.

The petition, with more than 2,500 signatures, is essentially meaningless given the current makeup of the Legislature. But it illustrates the frustratingly limited options millions of Americans face in trying to re-establish abortion rights as the country marks the two-year anniversary since the Supreme Court’s ruling.

West Virginia is among the 25 states that do not allow citizen initiatives or constitutional amendments on a statewide ballot, an avenue of direct democracy that has allowed voters to circumvent their legislatures and preserve abortion and other reproductive rights in a number of states over the past two years.

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Republicans there have repeatedly dismissed the idea of placing an abortion-rights measure before voters, which in West Virginia is a step only lawmakers can take.

“It makes you wonder what they’re so afraid of,” said Democratic Del. Kayla Young, one of only 16 women in the West Virginia Legislature. “If they feel so strongly that this is what people believe, prove it.”

The court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade was praised by abortion opponents as a decision that returned the question to the states. Former President Donald Trump, who named three of the justices who overturned Roe, has repeatedly claimed “the people” are now the ones deciding abortion access.

“The people are deciding,” he said during a recent interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “And in many ways, it’s a beautiful thing to watch.”

But that’s not true everywhere. In states allowing the citizen initiative and where abortion access has been on the ballot, voters have resoundingly affirmed the right to abortion.

Voters in seven states, including conservative ones such as Kentucky, Montana and Ohio, have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to curtail them in statewide votes over the past two years. Reproductive rights supporters are trying to put citizen initiatives on the ballot in several states this year.

But voters don’t have a direct say in about half the states.

This is particularly true for those living in the South. Republican-controlled legislatures, many of which have been heavily gerrymandered to give the GOP disproportionate power, have enacted some of the strictest abortion bans since the Supreme Court ruling while shunning efforts to expand direct democracy.

States began adopting the initiative process during the Progressive Era more than a century ago, giving citizens a way to make or repeal laws through a direct vote of the people. Between 1898 and 1918, nearly 20 states approved the citizen initiative. Since then, just five states have done so.

“It was a different time,” said John Matsusaka, professor of business and law at the University of Southern California. “There was a political movement across the whole country when people were trying to do what they saw as good government.”

Some lawmakers argue citizen initiatives bypass important checks and balances offered through the legislative process. In Tennessee, where Republicans have gerrymandered legislative districts to give them a supermajority in the statehouse, House Majority Leader William Lamberth likened ballot measures to polls rather than what he described as the legislature’s strict review of complicated policy-making.

“We evaluate bills every single year,” he said.

As in West Virginia, abortion-rights supporters or Democratic lawmakers have asked Republican-controlled legislatures in a handful of states to take the abortion question straight to voters, a tactic that hasn’t succeeded anywhere the GOP has a majority.

“This means you’re going to say, ‘Hey Legislature, would you like to give up some of your power? Would you like to give up your monopoly on policymaking?’” said Thad Kousser, professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. “You need a political momentum and then have the process cooperate.”

In South Carolina, which bans nearly all abortions, a Democratic-backed resolution to put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot never got a hearing this year. Attempts to attach the proposal to other pieces of legislation were quickly shut down by Republicans.

“If you believe you are doing the right thing for all the people of South Carolina — men and women and babies — you should have no problem putting this to the people,” said Democratic Sen. Margie Bright Matthews, alleging that Republicans fear they would lose if the issue went directly to voters.

In Georgia, Democratic Rep. Shea Roberts said she frequently fields questions from her constituents asking how they can get involved in a citizen-led ballot measure. The interest exploded after voters in Kansas rejected an anti-abortion measure from the Legislature in 2022 and was rekindled last fall after Ohio voters overwhelmingly passed an amendment codifying abortion rights in the state’s constitution.

Yet when she has brought legislation to create a citizen initiative process in Georgia, the efforts have been ignored inside the Republican-controlled Legislature.

“Voters are constantly asking us why we can’t do this, and we’re constantly explaining that it’s not possible under our current constitution,” Roberts said. “If almost half of states have this process, why shouldn’t Georgians?”

The contrast is on stark display in two presidential swing states. Michigan voters used a citizen initiative to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution in 2022. Voters in neighboring Wisconsin don’t have that ability.

Instead, Wisconsin Democrats, with a new liberal majority on the state Supreme Court, are working to overturn Republican-drawn legislative maps that are among the most gerrymandered in the country in the hope of eventually flipping the Legislature.

Analiese Eicher, director of communications at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, said a citizen-led ballot measure process would have been especially valuable for her cause.

“We should have legislators who represent their constituents,” she said. “And if they don’t, there should be another option.”

In West Virginia, Steve Williams acknowledges the petition he spearheaded didn’t change minds inside the Legislature.

But the Democratic mayor of Huntington, who is a longshot candidate for governor, said he thinks state Republicans have underestimated how strongly voters believe in restoring some kind of abortion access.

Republican leadership has pointed to a 2018 vote in which just under 52% of voters supported a constitutional amendment saying there is no right to abortion access in the state. But Williams said the vote also had to do with state funding of abortion, which someone could oppose without wanting access completely eliminated.

The vote was close, voter participation was low and it came before the Supreme Court’s decision that eliminated a nationwide right to abortion. Williams said West Virginia women weren’t facing the reality of a near-total ban.

“Let’s face it: Life in 2024 is a heck of a lot different for women than it was in 2018,” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Jeffrey Collins contributed to this report from Columbia, South Carolina. Kruesi reported from Nashville, Tennessee, and Fernando from Chicago.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Despite the ruling, women’s access to mifepristone still largely depends on a patchwork of state laws, with only about half of states allowing full access under terms approved by the federal government.

“It doesn’t change anything anywhere,” said David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University. “Tomorrow’s the same as today, which is the same as yesterday, which is the same as before this case was filed.”

Here’s a look at what Thursday’s decision does and does not mean for abortion access.

What did the Supreme Court decide?

Essentially, the justices said the anti-abortion doctors who brought the case did not have the legal standing to sue the Food and Drug Administration over the drug’s safety or changes making it more widely available. The FDA approved the drug more than 20 years ago and has reiterated its safety and effectiveness.

The anti-abortion doctors, under the name the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, argued they might have to treat emergency room patients who experience serious injuries after taking mifepristone.

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While the decision keeps mifepristone available, legal experts say that other groups or individuals who believe they can show a stronger legal connection to the drug might try to sue along similar lines.

“It’s a win that the status quo is preserved but it doesn’t signal that these are now dead arguments that others aren’t going to try and pursue,” said Rachel Rebouche, a Temple University law professor.

What is mifepristone?

Mifepristone is prescribed to end pregnancies by dilating the cervix and blocking the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. It is usually taken with a second drug, misprostol, that causes the uterus to cramp and contract. The two-drug regimen is used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks.

What does the ruling mean for the status of mifepristone?

Mifepristone remains fully approved and available under the current FDA framework, which allows telehealth prescribing and mail delivery to patients. The FDA has also expanded availability to large pharmacy chains and allowed prescribing by nurses and other health professionals.

Those policies have increased the prescribing of mifepristone, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of all U.S. abortions last year.

How do state laws impact access to mifepristone?

Access to the pills is restricted across large swaths of the country because of state laws that ban abortion (including medication abortion) outright or impose separate restrictions on the drug’s use.

Access largely depends on the laws in the state where a patient lives and, in the case of states banning or restricting mifepristone, what steps they are willing to take to circumvent them.

About half of U.S. states allows online prescribing and mail delivery of mifepristone, conforming to FDA’s drug label.

Currently, 14 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, including with mifepristone. More than a dozen other states have laws specifically limiting how it can be prescribed, such as requiring an in-person visit with a physician or separate counseling about the potential risks and downsides of the drug.

Those steps are not supported by major medical societies, including the American Medical Association.

How safe and effective is mifepristone?

The FDA and the Biden administration filed multiple legal challenges reiterating the drug’s safety and effectiveness.

Mifepristone results in a completed abortion 97.4% of the time, according to the FDA label. Like all drugs, the abortion pill is not 100% effective and in 2.6% of cases, a surgical intervention was needed to complete the abortion. Less than 1% of the time, the pregnancy continued.

In rare cases, mifepristone can cause serious complications including excessive bleeding, infections and other emergency problems. Those occur in far less than a fraction of 1% of all patients using the drug, according to the FDA label.

How are medication abortions increasing despite restrictions?

Despite state laws targeting mifepristone, statistics show women in those states continue to receive the drug through the mail because state authorities have little visibility into deliveries by the U.S. Postal Service.

A survey earlier this year found about about 8,000 women a month in states that restrict abortion or place limits on prescribing were getting the pills by mail at the end of 2023, according to the Society of Family Planning.

What’s next for legal challenges to mifepristone?

Legal experts say other parties could bring new lawsuits.

Idaho, Kansas and Missouri sought to join the case against the FDA, which the Supreme Court rejected — though a conservative Texas judge who initially ruled against the FDA allowed them to intervene in his district. The three states, all led by Republican attorneys general, could try to revive the case at the lower court, according to legal experts.

“They are not physicians who have to show that they actually have some relationship to abortion care,” Rebouche said. “They’re claiming a state interest in the regulation of medicine, so I think that’s the vehicle in which you could see a lawsuit come forward.”

___

Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this story from Cherry Hill, New Jersey

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

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Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The test vote won a 51-39 majority, but that was well short of the 60 votes to move ahead on the legislation.

It came as the Senate has abandoned hopes of doing serious bipartisan legislation before the election. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democrats are trying to instead spotlight issues they believe can help them win the presidency and keep the Senate in November. A similar vote on ensuring nationwide access to in vitro fertilization is expected next week.

That bill is expected to similarly stall in the Senate, where Democrats need 60 votes to move forward on legislation. Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats will “put reproductive freedoms front and center before this chamber, so that the American people can see for themselves who will stand up to defend their fundamental liberties.”

The effort comes as Democrats worry that reproductive rights will be further threatened after the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion two years ago and as they continue to see that access as one of their most potent election-year issues. President Joe Biden’s campaign has embraced reproductive rights as a key to winning undecided voters, especially women.

“Contraception is health care, essential health care, that millions of people rely on,” said Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat. She said the court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade “foretold more chaos to come.”

President Joe Biden called the Republican opposition to the bill “unacceptable.”

“We will continue to urge Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law and safeguard the right to contraception once and for all,” Biden said.

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Minority Republicans have scoffed at the votes, saying the political messaging votes were unserious distractions from legislation they would like to vote on. “I expect we will see a lot more show votes this summer,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, on Tuesday.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, one of two Republicans to vote with Democrats to move forward on the bill, said Monday that she would want the legislation to be amended to include more religious liberty protections. “It is clearly a messaging attempt and not a serious attempt in itself,” she said.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who along with Collins supports abortion rights, also voted to move forward on the legislation.

Many Republicans who voted against consideration of the bill said they support access to contraception but believe the legislation is unnecessary.

“The Democrats are using their power to push an alarmist and false narrative that there is a problem accessing contraception,” said Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee.

The Senate push on reproductive access this year differs from bipartisan legislation passed in 2022 that would protect same-sex marriage amid concerns that the court could go after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide. A vote on that bill was delayed until after that year’s midterm elections to try and avoid political complications, and 12 Republicans eventually supported it, sending it to Biden’s desk.

Since Republicans took the House majority last year, though, Congress has moved on few legislative items that were not immediately urgent or that did not face deadlines for expiration. Schumer has said repeatedly that he would like to move on bills to improve rail safety, lower the cost of prescription drugs and improve online safety for children, among other bipartisan legislation. But most of those bills have stalled in the divided Congress as some Republicans and Democrats have been less willing to work together in an election year.

Instead, Schumer has focused the Senate on judicial nominations and political messaging bills, including a repeat vote last month on a border security bill that Republicans had already rejected in February after months of bipartisan negotiations. Democrats who have faced intense criticism over the border issue have hoped that they can blunt that issue somewhat by highlighting that legislation. But Republicans have said it did not go far enough.

Democrats seized on the contraception issue after former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, said in an interview last month that he was open to supporting restrictions on birth control. He quickly reversed course and said that he “has never and never will” advocate to restrict that access.

Contraception has been increasingly entangled in the abortion debate in some conservative states, however. In Missouri, a women’s health care bill was stalled for months over concerns about expanding insurance coverage for birth control after some lawmakers falsely conflated birth control with medication abortion. In Arizona, Republicans unanimously blocked a Democratic effort to protect the right to contraception access. Tennessee Republicans blocked a bill that would have clarified that the state’s abortion ban would not affect contraceptive care or fertility treatments.

And in Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed bills from the Democratic-controlled Legislature that would have protected the right to contraception earlier this year. He said he supports the right to birth control but that “we cannot trample on the religious freedoms of Virginians.”

The Senate bill would make it federal law that an individual has the right to obtain contraceptives and to “engage in contraception,” and that health providers can provide them.

In the GOP-led House, Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina is leading a longshot effort to get enough signatures to discharge a similar version of the Senate’s contraception bill from committee and put it on the floor — a tactic used when leadership won’t bring up legislation for a vote.

Schumer said that the legislation designed to protect IVF access will come up in the Senate next week.

That bill comes after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos can be considered children under state law earlier this year, causing several clinics to suspend IVF treatments. The state later enacted a law providing legal protections for IVF clinics, but Democrats have argued that Congress should act to guarantee nationwide access to reproductive care to try and prevent courts from making those decisions.

“Democrats will act to safeguard and strengthen IVF access for all Americans, so that everyone has a chance to start a family,” Schumer said.

Southwest argues flight attendant Charlene Carter was fired because she violated company rules requiring civility in the workplace by sending “hostile and graphic” anti-abortion messages to a fellow employee, who also was president of the local union.

Carter called the union leader “despicable” for attending the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C., where participants protested the inauguration of then-President Donald Trump and called for protecting abortion rights.

Carter’s attorneys argue in briefs that she made clear to management she sent the material “because she was a pro-life Christian, and as a Christian she believes she must get the word out to anyone who touches the issue of abortion.”

They argued firing her violated federal law shielding employees from religious-based discrimination and that Southwest management and the union, which complained about Carr’s messages, should be held liable for her firing.

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After the trial, U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr, a Trump nominee who joined the bench in 2019, ordered the airline to tell flight attendants that under federal law, it “may not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs.”

Instead, the Dallas-based airline told employees that it “does not discriminate,” and told flight attendants to follow the airline policy that it cited in firing Carter.

Starr found Southwest in contempt in August for the way it explained the case to flight attendants. He ordered Southwest to pay Carter’s most recent legal costs and he dictated a statement for Southwest to relay to employees.

He also ordered three Southwest lawyers to complete at least eight hours of religious liberty training from the Alliance Defending Freedom, which offers training on compliance with federal law prohibiting religious discrimination in the workplace.

The conservative group has played a high-profile role in multiple legal fights. They include defending a baker and a website designer who didn’t want to work on same-sex marriage projects, efforts to limit transgender rights and a challenge to longstanding federal approval of a medication used in the most common way to end a pregnancy.

Lawyers for Carter said in briefs that the type of training ordered “is a commonplace civil contempt sanction” and denied that it impinges on the airline’s free speech rights.

The initial monetary award against Southwest and the union was $5.1 million, the bulk to be paid by Southwest. The judge, citing federal limits on punitive damages, later reduced it to about $800,000, including $450,000 in damages and back pay from Southwest, $300,000 in damages from the union and about $60,000 in interest.

California’s law is meant to circumvent an Arizona law — first passed in 1864 — that bans nearly all abortions in that state. The Arizona Supreme Court had ruled that law can take effect next month.

“I’m grateful for the California Legislative Women’s Caucus and all our partners for moving quickly to provide this backstop,” Newsom said. “California stands ready to protect reproductive freedom.”

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The Arizona Legislature responded by repealing that law earlier this month. But the repeal won’t take effect until later this year.

The Newsom administration said California’s law is “a critical stopgap for Arizona patients and providers.”

California’s law says Arizona doctors who are licensed in that state can come to California to perform abortions. The law will expire on Nov. 30.

Licensed Arizona doctors would have to apply to the Medical Board of California or the Osteopathic Medical Board of California. The law requires California regulators to approve those requests within five days.

Since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, more than 20 states began enforcing abortion bans of varying degrees.

Supporters of the reclassification of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known as “abortion pills,” say it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions. Numerous doctors, meanwhile, have said it will make it harder for them to prescribe the medicines that they use for other important reproductive health care needs, and could delay treatment.

Passage of the bill comes as both abortion rights advocates and abortion opponents await a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on an effort to restrict access to mifepristone. The justices did not appear ready to limit access to the drug on the day they heard arguments.

The GOP-dominated Legislature’s push to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol could possibly open the door for other Republican states with abortion bans that are seeking tighter restrictions on the drugs. Louisiana currently has a near-total abortion ban in place, applying both to surgical and medical abortions.

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Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills by placing it on the list of Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law.

The classification would require doctors to have a specific license to prescribe the drugs, which would be stored in certain facilities that in some cases could end up being located far from rural clinics. Knowingly possessing the drugs without a valid prescription would carry a punishment including hefty fines and jail time.

More than 200 doctors in the state signed a letter to lawmakers warning that it could produce a “barrier to physicians’ ease of prescribing appropriate treatment” and cause unnecessary fear and confusion among both patients and doctors. The physicians warn that any delay to obtaining the drugs could lead to worsening outcomes in a state that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country.

“This goes too far. We have not properly vetted this with the health care community and I believe it’s going to lead to further harm down the road,” said state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat who opposes the measure. “There’s a reason we rank at the bottom in terms of maternal health outcomes, and this is why.”

Supporters say people would be prevented from unlawfully using the pills, though language in the bill appears to carve out protections for pregnant woman who obtain the drug without a prescription for their own consumption.

The reclassification of the two drugs in Louisiana is an amendment to a bill originating in the Senate that would create the crime of “coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud.” The sister of Republican state Sen. Thomas Pressly, who authored the bill, has shared her own story, of her husband slipping her abortion-inducing drugs without her knowledge or consent.

“The purpose of bringing this legislation is certainly not to prevent these drugs from being used for legitimate health care purposes,” Senator Pressley said. “I am simply trying to put safeguards and guardrails in place to keep bad actors from getting these medications.”

The Senate voted 29-7, mainly along party lines, to pass the legislation. In the 39-person Senate there are only five women, all of whom voted in favor of the bill.

In addition to inducing abortions, mifepristone and misoprostol have other common uses, such as treating miscarriages, inducing labor and stopping hemorrhaging.

Mifepristone was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000 after federal regulators deemed it safe and effective for ending early pregnancies. It’s used in combination with misoprostol, which the FDA has separately approved to treat stomach ulcers.

The drugs are not classified as controlled substances by the federal government because regulators do not view them as carrying a significant risk of misuse. The federal Controlled Substances Act restricts the use and distribution of prescription medications such as opioids, amphetamines, sleeping aids and other drugs that carry the risk of addiction and overdose.

Abortion opponents and conservative Republicans both inside and outside the state have applauded the Louisiana bill. Conversely, the move has been strongly criticized by Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who in a social media post described it as “absolutely unconscionable.”

The Louisiana legislation now heads to the desk of conservative Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. The governor, who was backed by former President Donald Trump during last year’s gubernatorial election, has indicated his support for the measure, remarking in a recent post on X, “You know you’re doing something right when @KamalaHarris criticizes you.”

Landry’s office did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

A recent survey found that thousands of women in states with abortion bans or restrictions are receiving abortion pills in the mail from states that have laws protecting prescribers. The survey did not specify how many of those cases were in Louisiana.

Louisiana has a near-total abortion ban in place, which applies both to medical and surgical abortions. The only exceptions to the ban are if there is substantial risk of death or impairment to the mother if she continues the pregnancy or in the case of “medically futile” pregnancies, when the fetus has a fatal abnormality.

Currently, 14 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions.

The measure, which has drawn support from anti-abortion groups and alarm from medical professionals and reproductive rights advocates, would add the medications mifepristone and misoprostol to Schedule IV of the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law. Abortion — both medical and surgical — is illegal in Louisiana, so it is already illegal to prescribe the medications to terminate a pregnancy, except in very limited circumstances.

Medication abortions accounted for 63% of all abortions in 2023, according to the reproductive rights think tank the Guttmacher Institute.

The bill passed Tuesday in a vote in the state’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives, 64-29.

The measure will now go back to the Senate, and if approved, will then be sent to the governor to sign into law.

The legislation would make possession of the medications without a valid prescription or an order from a medical professional punishable by up to five years in prison. Pregnant people who obtain the medications for their own consumption would not be subject to prosecution, according to the legislation.

Medical professionals have spoken out against the measure, saying the medications have critical uses outside of abortion care, including aiding in labor and delivery, miscarriage treatment, and the prevention of gastrointestinal ulcers.

Schedule IV substances include some narcotics; medications within the category of depressants, such as Xanax and Valium; muscle relaxants; sleep aids; and stimulants that can be used to treat ADHD and weight loss.

The bill, Senate Bill 276, would also criminalize “coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud,” which would prohibit someone from knowingly using the medications to cause or attempt to cause an abortion without the consent of the pregnant person. That would be punishable by up to 10 years, or up to 20 years if the pregnant person was three months or more into a pregnancy. 

Republican state Sen. Thomas Pressly, who introduced the bill, has said the issue is personal to him and his sister, Catherine Herring. Herring’s estranged husband was accused of slipping abortion medication into her drinks when she was pregnant with their third child. Mason Herring pleaded guilty to the allegations in February and was sentenced to 180 days in jail. 

But doctors and reproductive rights advocates have expressed alarm at the bill, which would make Louisiana the only state to categorize the two medications as controlled dangerous substances. 

“They are safe and effective and they are not dangerous drugs of abuse to be on a schedule of a controlled dangerous substance list,” Dr. Jennifer Avegno, an emergency medicine physician and the director of the New Orleans Health Department, told NBC News on Tuesday. “From a medical standpoint, healthcare providers think this is bad science, and not well informed.” 

“This is not about abortion. This is about using these drugs, routinely for many, many other things. Mainly, number one to facilitate safe childbirth, number two miscarriage management,” she said.

Avegno is one of more than 250 doctors who wrote in a letter to Pressly that reclassifying the medications would create “the false perception that these are dangerous drugs that require additional regulation” and said that the proposal was “not scientifically based.”

“Given its historically poor maternal health outcomes, Louisiana should prioritize safe and evidence-based care for pregnant women,” the doctors said.

Pressly told NBC News on Tuesday that the goal of the bill “certainly is to not provide an additional challenge to our medical providers, but it is to ensure that these drugs are being used appropriately and effectively for legitimate medical reasons which are outside of abortion. As stated previously, abortion is already illegal in Louisiana.”

After it was introduced in the House Tuesday afternoon, State Rep. Mandie Landry, a Democrat, called for a motion to recommit the bill to the legislature’s Health and Welfare Committee because of the amendment that would recategorize the medications as controlled dangerous substances.

“This amendment is about rescheduling drugs that are used every single day to induce labor, to manage miscarriages, to manage post-hemorrhage issues with a pregnancy,” she said.

Landry said the recategorization would require certain storage facilities to store the drugs, which could potentially hurt the ability of rural clinics to access them and provide them to patients.

“I think it’s horrible how this good bill was hijacked by outsiders who are not doctors, and aren’t even legislators,” she said. 

Landry’s motion was voted down, 66-30.

Rep. Julie Emerson, a Republican who introduced the bill for the House vote, said that the amendment “does not mean the doctors cannot prescribe this and administer this. This doesn’t mean they can’t prescribe it, and that people can’t go pick it up and still use this medication.”

Abortion is banned in Louisiana with limited exceptions, which include to save a pregnant person’s life, to prevent “serious risk” to their health and if the fetus is not expected to survive pregnancy. Earlier this month, a Louisiana legislative committee rejected a bill that would have added cases of rape and incest to the exceptions. 

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

In Naples, hours before President Joe Biden spoke in Tampa April 23 about abortion, DeSantis told a crowd that Biden was coming to Florida to support a constitutional amendment “that will eliminate parental consent for minors and that’s written in a way that’s intentionally designed to deceive voters.”

The governor repeated this warning on April 30, calling it “an amendment that they wanted to go into Florida’s Constitution that will eliminate parental consent for minors.”

“Why would you take away parental consent?” he asked.

The picture of how the amendment could affect parental consent is complex. The ballot measure needs 60% approval to take  effect. And if it is approved, the amendment itself says it “does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

But DeSantis’ warning is based on a prediction about what could happen to the parental consent law through legal challenges. 

That’s because the amendment stipulates that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health.” Legal experts say this wording could lead advocates to challenge a 2020 state law that requires written parental consent before a minor undergoes an abortion.

But the consent law’s elimination isn’t a foregone conclusion — it would likely be decided by the courts. 

Adding one more wrinkle: Legal experts told us that, until April 1, parental consent requirements had been unconstitutional in Florida for decades. 

Here’s why DeSantis’ statement needs more explanation. 

What the amendment says about parental consent, notification

The summary for Amendment 4 reads in full:

“No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

DeSantis and others argue that the language would eliminate the law requiring minors to get parental consent before an abortion. Minors can also seek a judge’s permission to obtain an abortion without parental involvement.

But legal experts told PolitiFact the amendment doesn’t spell the immediate end of parental consent for abortions in Florida.

“It’s possible that a person or group might sue to overturn the (parental consent) law, however, the case would be heard in state court and, ultimately, the Florida Supreme Court would decide the issue,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida. 

Given the court’s conservative bent, Jewett said, it’s possible that it would uphold Florida’s existing law, even if the constitutional amendment passes. Justices could determine that parents have traditionally had a legal right to have a say in their children’s health care decisions, he said, and therefore still have a say here.

The amendment also stipulates that it “does not overrule the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.” This refers to Article X, Section 22 of the Florida Constitution, which requires parental notification before a minor seeks an abortion.

Bryan Griffin, a DeSantis spokesperson, told PolitiFact in an email that parental notification is not the same thing as consent. He referenced DeSantis’ April 17 news conference, during which DeSantis said the “notification is after-the-fact. The consent is obviously a condition precedent.” The initiative’s language, however, as well as current Florida law, specifies that parents would be notified before an abortion takes place, not after.

“Minors do not have the same constitutional rights as adults do, and the Florida Constitution recognizes this in the abortion context in its provision that expressly allows the Legislature to require parental notification,” said Quinn Yeargain, a Widener University assistant law professor and expert on state constitutional law. 

“While Section 22 only relates to notification, not consent, it still clearly indicates a desire in the Constitution to limit abortion rights for minors,” Yeargain said.

The state’s 2020 consent law became enforceable only on April 1, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional protection of privacy didn’t apply to abortions.

A 1989 Florida Supreme Court case had invalidated an earlier parental consent law for minors seeking abortions on the grounds that it violated Florida’s constitutional right to privacy. So, although DeSantis has a point that the initiative could eventually eliminate the consent requirement, Floridians until April had lived without it for more than 30 years.

“We don’t know if parental consent will later be interpreted to be a delay or a prohibition on abortion under the amendment, but we do know that the parental consent requirement has been deemed unconstitutional since 1989” until now, said Louis Virelli, a Stetson University law professor.

“I hear that Joe Biden is on his way to Florida this afternoon,” DeSantis said during an April 23 news conference ahead of the president’s Tampa speech. “And now he’s coming down to try to support a constitutional amendment that will mandate abortion until the moment of birth.”

But DeSantis’ statement about the amendment is undermined by the initiative’s language.

If approved by at least 60% of voters, the measure would restrict prohibitions on abortion before fetal viability — typically considered to be around 24 weeks of pregnancy — or when necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s health. A full-term pregnancy is around 40 weeks.

In the U.S., less than 1% of abortions are performed after 21 weeks and typically involve an emergency or fatal fetal anomaly. Florida’s upcoming six-week abortion ban, which takes effect May 1, includes an exception for the pregnant woman’s life. If the constitutional amendment passes, Florida’s Legislature can further shape what kind of health exceptions would qualify. 

What the amendment says on abortion limits

The summary for Amendment 4, titled, “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” reads:

“No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

Responding to PolitiFact’s questions, Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, wrote, “Where does it define who gets to define ‘viability’?” 

Health care providers place fetal viability between 22 and 25 weeks of pregnancy. Neonatal survival rates in that time range vary and depend on the size and health of the fetus, the pregnant woman’s health and the health care facility.

Although the amendment doesn’t define viability, Florida Statute 390.011 does. It says viability is “the stage of fetal development when the life of a fetus is sustainable outside the womb through standard medical measures.” The amendment would not change this definition.

“It is not true that the amendment protects the right to an abortion up until the moment of birth. It only does so when a woman’s health is in danger,” said Louis Virelli, a Stetson University College of Law professor.

He said the amendment reinstates the restrictions of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that provided federally protected abortion access until a fetus is viable, in Florida. The Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe when it ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that states should set laws on abortion access.

“Viability is a well-known medical term that marks the point at which a fetus is able to survive outside the womb,” Caroline Mala Corbin, a University of Miami law professor, wrote to PolitiFact in an email. “Might the courts interpret ‘protecting the patient’s health’ so broadly as to essentially make abortion available until birth? Of course not.”

More than 90% of abortions take place in the first trimester, or up until around 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Abortions later in pregnancy are rare and often happen because of severe fetal anomalies or health risks to the mother.

“It’s also misleading because physicians, if anything, have been very reluctant to perform abortions in health emergencies that are clearly justified under state statutes for fear of liability,” said Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and law professor at University of California, Davis. “The terms are ambiguous, but who’s going to be interpreting that? The Florida Supreme Court and the conservative legislature. To think that they will say this is abortion to birth, that’s not going to happen.”

Florida’s upcoming six-week abortion ban, which DeSantis signed, allows later abortions when doctors certify that the procedure would avert “serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman other than a psychological condition.” 

Although this is more restrictive than the amendment’s broader language about protecting the patient’s health, the Legislature would still be able to shape it further.

Our ruling

DeSantis said Florida’s abortion amendment “will mandate abortion until the moment of birth.”

The amendment does not do this. The measure allows abortion before fetal viability, typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy, or when necessary after that period to protect the health of the pregnant woman. In the U.S., less than 1% of abortions in the U.S. are performed after 21 weeks and typically involve a health emergency or fatal fetal anomaly.

Existing Florida law defines viability as “the stage of fetal development when the life of a fetus is sustainable outside the womb through standard medical measures.”  

We rate DeSantis’ statement False.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

Lawsuit targets state website advocating against abortion ballot initiative

Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The lawsuit led by Tennessee and Arkansas comes since finalized federal regulations were published on Monday to provide guidance for employers and workers on how to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The language means workers can ask for time off to obtain an abortion and recover from the procedure.

The rules, which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adopted on a 3-2 vote along party lines, will go into effect June 18. The lawsuit filed in federal court in Arkansas argues the regulations go beyond the scope of the 2022 law that passed with bipartisan support.

“This is yet another attempt by the Biden administration to force through administrative fiat what it cannot get passed through Congress,” Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement. “Under this radical interpretation of the PWFA, business owners will face federal lawsuits if they don’t accommodate employees’ abortions, even if those abortions are illegal under state law.”

An EEOC spokesperson referred questions to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Better Balance, one of the most vocal advocates for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, called the lawsuit a baseless attack on the law’s protections.

“This lawsuit represents a bad faith effort to politicize what is a vital protection for the health and economic security of millions of families, and a continuation of the alarming attacks on women’s health and reproductive choice,” Dina Bakst, the group’s co-president, said in a statement. “We are committed to fighting to defend workers’ rights under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.”

The EEOC has said the new law does not obligate employers or employer-sponsored health plans to cover abortion-related costs, and that the type of accommodation that most likely will be sought under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regarding an abortion is time off to attend a medical appointment or for recovery, which does not have to be paid.

The other states joining the lawsuit are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia.

After a dizzying course of votes throughout the afternoon, three state House Republicans joined Democrats in approving a repeal of the Civil War-era law that made abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one.

Members of the state Senate, where Republicans also hold a narrow majority, voted last week in favor of a motion to introduce a bill that would repeal the abortion ban. Two Republicans joined every Democrat in the chamber on that vote.

The state Senate could vote on the repeal as early as next Wednesday, after the bill comes on the floor for a “third reading,” as is required under chamber rules.

The state Senate is likely to pass a repeal of the law, a source in Arizona familiar with the situation told NBC News. Once that happens, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is certain to sign the repeal quickly.

Abortion rights supporters and Democrats — all the way up to the White House — praised Arizona lawmakers for their passage of the repeal.

“That’s a good thing,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the vote. “We’re moving forward in the right direction.”

The Biden campaign blamed Donald Trump for the turmoil, saying that the former president “is responsible for Arizona’s abortion ban” after appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.

“If he retakes power, the chaos and cruelty he has created will only get worse in all 50 states,” Biden 2024 campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

The state House’s vote to repeal came on the chamber’s third attempt since the state Supreme Court ruled earlier this month to uphold the 160-year-old near-total ban.

Following that ruling, Republicans across the U.S. — including Trump, who has said he wants to let states make their own decisions on abortion policies — called on legislators in the state to repeal the ban amid a broader political blowback against the GOP on the issue of reproductive rights in the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

But Republicans in the Arizona state House, where the party holds a narrow majority, had remained steadfast in not allowing a repeal bill to advance.

But on Wednesday, amid mounting pressure, Republicans in the chamber appeared to finally relent, with three GOP lawmakers — state Reps. Matt Gress, Tim Dunn and Justin Wilmeth — joining the 29 Democrats in the chamber to pass the repeal.

Republican opponents of the repeal pleaded with their colleagues to reject the bill for a third time during remarks they were allowed to make while voting.

Abortion Apr 12

More young people choosing permanent sterilization after abortion restrictions

Abortion Apr 10

Arizona Republicans distance themselves from state Supreme Court ruling on abortion

Arizona Apr 9

Arizona Supreme Court upholds near-total ban on abortions

“We should not have rushed this bill through the legislative process,” Republican state House Speaker Ben Toma said. “Instead today we are rushing to judgment.”

“It breaks my heart that you’re here to witness this,” said House Speaker Pro Tempore Travis Grantham, before casting a “no” vote. “I’m proud of my Republican caucus that has fought this off as long as it has,” added Grantham, who accused Democrats of having used the issue as a political cudgel.

“To see how this has been turned against one party and used as a weaponization of the issue is disgusting,” he said. At the end of Wednesday’s hearing, Grantham said the vote was an “awful, disgusting situation” and stripped Gress, as well as Democratic Assistant Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos, of their committee assignments.

Just last week, during the state House’s prior session, Democrats in the chamber introduced a bill to repeal the 160-year-old abortion ban and filed a motion to Republican House leaders requesting an immediate vote. The vote failed, prompting Democrats to move again to force a vote, which also fell short.

Republicans were more easily able to kill that vote because it came under a procedural vote to suspend state House rules. Under Arizona House rules, a majority of the chamber that includes the speaker is required to vote to suspend the rules to hold an immediate vote. Such obstacles didn’t exist on Wednesday because the vote came amid normal House order.

Wednesday’s proceedings marked the latest chapter in the fight over abortion rights in the crucial battleground following the Arizona Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling earlier this month.

The law the conservative-leaning court ruled was enforceable makes abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one. The law was codified in 1901 — and again in 1913, after Arizona gained statehood — and outlaws abortion from the moment of conception but includes an exception to save the woman’s life.

The law is set to go into effect as early as June 8, though Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes has said her office is working to find ways to delay that date. The ban is likely to go into effect for a short period of time — even if the Senate passes it next week and Hobbs signs it shortly thereafter — because under Arizona law, repeals don’t go into effect until 90 days after a legislative session concludes. Last year’s session ended in late July.

“We may still be looking at a period of time when the 1864 [ban] could potentially take effect,” Mayes said in a statement.

A successful repeal of the 1864 ban would likely result in state policy reverting to a 15-week ban on abortions that makes exceptions for medical emergencies but not for rape or incest. 

Some prominent anti-abortion groups called on Republicans to unite behind that law, which was enacted in 2022, following Wednesday’s vote.

“After months of confusion, the people of Arizona will soon have clarity on the state’s abortion laws: a 15-week protection for the unborn,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “Kari Lake and all GOP candidates and elected officials must bring clarity to Arizona voters by campaigning vigorously in support of Arizona’s 15-week protection with exceptions.”

Despite the continued repeal efforts, voters are likely to have the power this November to decide on the future of abortion rights in the state themselves.

Organizers in the state are likely to succeed in placing a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would create a “fundamental right” to receive abortion care up until fetal viability, or about the 24th week of pregnancy. If voters approve the ballot measure, it would effectively undo the 1864 ban, which now remains law in the state.

It would also bar the state from restricting abortion care in situations in which the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk after the point of viability, according to the treating health care professional.

But the state Supreme Court decision prompted Republicans to also discuss a series of possible contingencies to upend that effort, including pushing alternative ballot measures to compete with the pro-abortion rights proposed amendment, according to a leaked strategy document circulated among Arizona Republicans.

During a brief state House Rules committee hearing Wednesday, Republicans voted to advance three resolutions — without explaining what they were — that Democrats and abortion rights supporters said were likely the GOP-backed ballot measures.

“I can’t tell you what the subject matter will be,” Grantham, the House Speaker Pro Tempore who led the hearing, said.

Chris Love, a spokesperson for Arizona for Abortion Access, called the resolutions “three dishonest placeholder bills” that served as “the first step toward referring up to three anti-abortion measures to the November ballot aimed at confusing and deceiving voters in hopes of pulling votes from the Arizona Abortion Access Act.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Mother describes leaving Idaho for an abortion as Supreme Court considers its ban
• Trump campaign, RNC pledge to deploy 100,000 attorneys and volunteers to monitor the vote
• House Speaker Johnson accuses Columbia of allowing ‘lawless agitators’ to takeover campus

The case marks the first time the Supreme Court has considered the implications of a state ban since the nationwide right to abortion was overturned. It comes from Idaho, which is among 14 states that now ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy with very limited exceptions.

While members of the high court’s conservative majority expressed concern about pregnant patients’ ability to get emergency care in the state, it was unclear whether any were swayed by the Biden administration’s argument.

The Justice Department says abortion care must be allowed in emergencies that seriously threaten a woman’s health under a federal health care law that requires hospitals accepting Medicare to provide emergency care regardless of patients’ ability to pay.

“How can you impose restrictions on what Idaho can criminalize, simply because hospitals in Idaho have chosen to participate in Medicare?” said Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Justices on the high court’s liberal minority, meanwhile, raised sharp questions about whether Idaho’s law was putting women’s health at risk.

“Within these rare cases, there’s a significant number where the woman’s life is not in peril, but she’s going to lose her reproductive organs. She’s going to lose the ability to have children in the future unless an abortion takes place,” said Justice Elena Kagan.

The Biden administration argues that even in states where abortion is banned, federal health care law says hospitals must be allowed to terminate pregnancies in rare emergencies where a patient’s life or health is at serious risk.

Idaho contends its ban has exceptions for life-saving abortions but allowing it in more medical emergencies would turn hospitals into “abortion enclaves.” The state argues the administration is misusing a health care law that is meant to ensure patients aren’t turned away based on their ability to pay.

The Supreme Court has allowed the Idaho law to go into effect, even during emergencies, as the case played out. It makes performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Supreme Court Apr 23

What's EMTALA, the patient protection law at the center of Supreme Court abortion arguments?

Abortion Apr 12

More young people choosing permanent sterilization after abortion restrictions

Dueling protests were taking shape outside the court before the start of arguments on Wednesday. “Abortion saves lives,” read signs displayed by abortion rights supporters. Opponents displayed a sign that read, “Emergency rooms are not abortion clinics.”

Doctors have said Idaho’s abortion ban has already affected emergency care. More women whose conditions are typically treated with abortions must now be flown out of state for care, since doctors must wait until they are close to death to provide abortions within the bounds of state law.

Meanwhile, complaints of pregnant women being turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to federal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Anti-abortion groups blame doctors for mishandling maternal emergency cases. Idaho argues the Biden administration overstates health care woes to undermine state abortion laws.

The justices also heard another abortion case this term seeking to restrict access to abortion medication. It remains pending, though the justices overall seemed skeptical of the push.

The Justice Department originally brought the case against Idaho, arguing the state’s abortion law conflicts with the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, known as EMTALA. It requires hospitals that accept Medicare to provide emergency care to any patient regardless of their ability to pay. Nearly all hospitals accept Medicare.

A federal judge initially sided with the administration and ruled that abortions were legal in medical emergencies. After the state appealed, the Supreme Court allowed the law to go fully into effect in January.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June.

The paper, published Friday in JAMA Health Forum, is the first to focus specifically on the contraception choices of women and men ages 18 to 30 after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ended the constitutional right to abortion. 

Studying this age group is important because they are “much more likely to have an abortion and … to experience sterilization regret relative to their older counterparts,” said co-author Jacqueline Ellison, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

A vasectomy is a routine procedure in men that blocks sperm from reaching semen. Tubal ligation or sterilization involves cutting, tying or removing the fallopian tubes to prevent sperm from reaching the eggs. 

It’s difficult to prove the Dobbs decision caused a rise in women and men undergoing permanent birth control. But the new study used a particular statistical approach that, Ellison said, strongly suggested the increase in sterilization procedures flowed from the Supreme Court’s decision and the subsequent actions in 21 states to ban or further restrict access to abortion.

Ellison and her fellow researchers analyzed medical record data from academic medical centers and affiliated clinics nationally from two periods: Jan. 1, 2019, to May 31, 2022, before Dobbs, and from June 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023, after Dobbs.

They found that there were roughly 58 more tubal ligations per 100,000 outpatient visits after Dobbs and 27 more vasectomies per 100,000 visits. 

“There was a lot of fear and anxiety … around whether people were going to be able to get an abortion that they needed or wanted and even fears about being able to access contraception down the road,” she said.

Young women may have felt a greater urgency to act than their male partners in the wake of policy changes because pregnancy disproportionately affects them, said Dr. Angela Liang, a clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the new study. There are medical risks during pregnancy and during delivery, “such as postpartum hemorrhage and the need for a cesarean section,” Liang said, adding that much of the burden after pregnancy also falls on women.

Abortion Apr 10

Arizona Republicans distance themselves from state Supreme Court ruling on abortion

Arizona Apr 9

Arizona Supreme Court upholds near-total ban on abortions

The new study had limitations. For one thing, the data was not broken down by state, which can reveal a more detailed response to policy changes.

In Michigan, for example, the Supreme Court’s decision allowed a 1931 law making all abortions a felony to be enforced. Two and a half months later, a permanent injunction blocked the law, and, two months after that, Michigan voters passed an amendment to the state constitution that established an individual right to reproductive freedom.

Liang and several colleagues analyzed electronic health records at one health care institution in Michigan and found that requests for tubal sterilizations surged in the months after the Dobbs decision and then returned to baseline.

“The decrease back to baseline after 6 months may have been due to the demand being met, a decreased sense of urgency after abortion access was temporarily protected, or crisis fatigue,” they wrote in JAMA last year. 

Using medical records to analyze contraception decisions captures the decisions of only patients and not those who have not sought medical care during the time period studied. 

In a recent study, Megan Kavanaugh, the principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, and a colleague analyzed survey data of reproductive-age women in four states, finding an increase in condom use but no significant changes in permanent contraception methods. The report from Guttmacher, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights, was published in a medical journal in February.

This broader population of women “may not necessarily have very strong attitudes about pregnancy prevention,” said Kavanaugh, who was not involved in the new study.

A more complete examination of contraception choices in the United States will be available at the end of the year when the federally sponsored National Survey of Family Growth releases data from January 2022 through December 2023, Kavanaugh said. The pandemic interrupted the survey, and the latest available data is from 2019.

“It is the gold standard for much of the data we track around sexual and reproductive health care and their outcomes,” she said.

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Republicans in the state issued a wave of statements in opposition to Tuesday’s ruling, which came a day after former President Donald Trump said that abortion laws should be decided by states.

Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, who two years ago called the 1864 statute “a great law,” said Tuesday that it was “out of step with Arizonans.”

“I oppose today’s ruling,” she said, while also adding, “I wholeheartedly agree with President Trump — this is a very personal issue that should be determined by each individual state and her people.”

Trump has frequently boasted that he is responsible for the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. More than a dozen states have imposed abortion bans or no longer have facilities where abortions can be obtained since the Supreme Court eliminated federal protections in 2022.

Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., who in 2021 co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which declared the right to life at “the moment of fertilization,” also voiced disapproval of the ruling, saying abortion “should be decided by Arizonans, not legislated from the bench.”

In 2022, Schweikert wrote on X that he was “pleased” with the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Fellow Arizona Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani said that Tuesday’s ruling was “a disaster for women and providers” and that the Civil War-era law was “archaic.”

Schweikert and Ciscomani are locked in competitive races for re-election that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report has labeled Republican toss-ups.

The campaign arm of House Democrats said Schweikert and Ciscomani “are hell-bent on controlling women and bringing this country backwards.”

“Voters know that Juan Ciscomani and David Schweikert have been working overtime to restrict access to abortion care,” Lauryn Fanguen, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement Tuesday. “Whether it’s voting to restrict medication abortion or co-sponsoring a nationwide abortion ban, time and time again Ciscomani and Schweikert have made it clear that they will side with anti-abortion zealots over Arizona women.”

Republican legislators also blasted the high court’s ruling.State Rep. T.J. Shope called the ruling “disappointing to say the least,” adding that he would work to repeal the law in favor of a 15-week abortion law then-Gov. Doug Ducey signed two years ago.

Ducey, a Republican, said the ruling was “not the outcome I would have preferred.”

The law upheld by the state Supreme Court outlaws abortion from the moment of conception but includes an exception to save the woman’s life. The ruling effectively undoes a lower court’s ruling that the recent 15-week ban from 2022 superseded the 1864 law.

State Rep. Matt Gress, who also backed a 15-week abortion ban, condemned the ruling, saying it “cannot stand.”

“I cannot and will not condemn women, especially the victims of rape and incest, to be forced to carry their pregnancy to term,” Gress said, calling on Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma to bring a measure to the floor to repeal the ban “and restore modern-day protections for Arizona women.”

Petersen and Toma — both Republicans — said in a joint statement that they were looking over the court’s ruling.

“We will be closely reviewing the court’s ruling, talking to our members, and listening to our constituents to determine the best course of action for the legislature,” the statement said.

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Arizona Senate Republicans did not say whether they would take up a repeal effort.

Adam Edelman and Alex Tabet contributed.

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In a four-and-half-minute video released on his Truth Social media platform, Trump falsely claimed that “we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, NBC News reported. A majority of Americans have consistently said in polling that they favor the Roe vs. Wade protections that the court dismantled.

“My view is, now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said.

In doing so, he refused to take a position on the national ban that has been promoted by some of his staunchest allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and former White House aide Kellyanne Conway. In the past, Trump had hinted that he might embrace a national ban, referring to a 15- or 16-week threshold as a consensus position.

Trump did not say what he would do if he won the presidency and Congress sent him a national ban.

Over the last quarter of a century, and even since he became a candidate for office in 2015, Trump has been all over the map on how to handle the abortion issue. Since the 2024 campaign began, he’s offered few specifics about which policies he’d back in the post-Roe v. Wade era should he win the White House.

Trump, a Florida resident, hasn’t said where he stands on Florida’s new six-week ban. When he’s teased support for a nationwide ban, his words often appear to contradict formal statements put out by his campaign.

Trump has said he supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother, a position he reiterated in Monday’s video. But the president does not determine how states make their laws.

Trump has frequently gloated over being responsible for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which dismantled reproductive rights protections. But he also blamed GOP losses in 2022 on the issue and has said Republicans need to learn how to talk about abortion in a way that doesn’t turn off potential voters. 

Last year, after abortion protections were reversed, he made a vague overture in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he would be a voice of consensus on abortion — but didn’t specify how.

“Let me just tell you what I’d do,” he said. “I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable.”

At the time, he said he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban at 15 weeks.

In recent months, however, Trump moved in the direction of a federal abortion ban even as some of his statements were at odds with his campaign. After reports surfaced that he told allies he was mulling a federal abortion ban at 16 weeks, his campaign dismissed it as “fake news.” Soon after, Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told NBC News that “Trump is warming up to 16 weeks.” And then Trump himself in an interview suggested he’d support a 15-week ban. 

The prospect of the top of the GOP ticket backing a federal abortion ban at a time when Democrats are elevating the issue as a central point of attack could put swing-state Republicans in a trick box, after some have attempted to moderate their positions. Statements from Trump’s campaign, however, seem to be leaning toward states’ rights and not a federal ban.

“President Trump supports preserving life but has also made clear that he supports states’ rights because he supports the voters’ right to make decisions for themselves,” Brian Hughes, a Trump senior adviser, said in a statement. He added: “President Trump thinks voters should have the last word.”

After offering little clarity, this week, at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., Trump said his campaign would be “making a statement next week on abortion” after he was asked if he supported a six-week abortion ban that the Florida Supreme Court just upheld.

President Joe Biden’s campaign has seized on Trump’s varying remarks on abortion, particularly his past boasts of having a hand in overturning Roe v. Wade. 

“Donald Trump doesn’t trust women,” Biden says in a new ad. “I do.” 

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Amanda Zurawski and Kaitlyn Joshua will travel to North Carolina and Wisconsin over the next two weeks to meet with doctors, local officials and voters. The Biden campaign sees their stories as potent firsthand accounts of the growing medical peril for many women as abortion restrictions pushed by Republicans complicate health care.

“The abortion topic is a very heavy topic, and I understand that, said Joshua, 31, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. ”But I also understand and believe that the Biden and Harris administration is the only administration that could do anything remotely close to addressing the abortion bans … and then also doing a deeper dive into research and understanding women’s health in general.”

Biden and Democrats see reproductive health as a major driver for the 2024 election as the president and his proxies blame Republican Donald Trump, whose judicial nominations paved the way for the Supreme Court’s conservative majority decision in 2022 that overturned abortion rights codified by Roe v. Wade.

Republicans, including Trump, are struggling to figure out how to talk about the issue, if at all. Trump has both taken credit for the overturning of Roe and suggested abortion should be legal until 15 weeks, and has promised to make a statement outlining his policies this week.

Since the high court’s ruling, voters have approved a number of statewide ballot initiatives to preserve or expand the right to abortion. Support for abortion access drove women to the polls during the 2022 midterm elections, delivering Democrats unexpected success.

About two-thirds of Americans say abortion should generally be legal, according to polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Only about one-quarter say abortion should always be legal and only about 1 in 10 say it should always be illegal.

Joshua and her husband were excited to be having a second baby. But she started to experience bleeding and serious pain at about 11 weeks. She suspected she was miscarrying.

At an emergency room in Baton Rouge, doctors examined her but wouldn’t confirm she was miscarrying or discuss medical options, she said. She was sent home to wait. The bleeding worsened, and she went to a second hospital where again, doctors sent her home and told her to contact her doctor in a few days. A midwife eventually confirmed that Joshua had miscarried.

“Something that sounds as simple as dealing with a miscarriage can’t even be met with a true diagnosis anymore,” Joshua said. “It’s kind of wild, right? And it’s really frightening.”

Joshua and Zurawski will be in Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday, a state Biden hopes to flip. The state has enacted a law banning most abortions after 12 weeks, overriding a veto from the Democratic governor.

The week after that, they will visit Milwaukee, Eau Claire and Madison, Wisconsin, a state Biden won in 2020. Republicans in the state Assembly tried to set up a statewide referendum on the April ballot banning abortion after 14 weeks of pregnancy — more restrictive than current law — but the legislative session ended without a state Senate vote.

Both women said they felt compelled to get into politics after their own experiences.

“People don’t get how bad it is, and they don’t get how bleak it is,” Zurawski said. “And so the more we continue to share our stories. … I think it’s really important to spread awareness and paint this picture.”

Zurawski, 37, of Austin sued Texas last year after she and other women could not get medical care because of the state’s abortion laws. She had been in her second trimester, after 18 months of fertility treatments, when she went into early labor and was told the baby would not survive. Doctors said they could not intervene to provide an abortion because Zurawski wasn’t in enough medical danger.

Zurawski had to wait. Three days later, her condition rapidly worsened and she developed sepsis, a dangerous medical condition in which the body responds improperly to an infection. She stabilized long enough to deliver a stillborn girl, whom she named Willow. Zurawski then spent days in intensive care.

She recently returned from a family trip to Disney World and said, “I thought I’d be coming home from that trip with a 1-year-old and be putting her down for a nap.”

“But instead I’m doing this interview to help campaign for Biden,” Zurawski said. “It’s just the complete opposite world than I ever would have seen myself in.”

On Monday, the state Supreme Court energized abortion rights proponents with two rulings: one that paves the way for a six-week abortion ban and another that will give voters the opportunity to repeal the ban as they also cast their vote for president.

“This puts Florida in play,” said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.

Newhouse said it’s not just the national abortion referendum, which has benefited Democrats in other states. It’s also the fact that Florida voters will be living with the strict newly implemented abortion restrictions for the months leading up to the November election.

But while it’s true the battle over abortion has translated into electoral success for abortion rights advocates in other states, this is Florida, and Democrats have a history of turning opportunity into disappointment, leaving it to be determined whether the issue could flip Florida back blue as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump head toward a rematch.

Florida Apr 2

From 15 to 6 weeks: What changes with Florida's abortion laws after court's ruling?

Florida Apr 1

Florida Supreme Court upholds state's 15-week abortion ban, but voters will soon have a say

The abortion debate didn’t stop Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis from winning reelection by a landslide in 2022, even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. DeSantis signed new abortion restrictions and Democrats correctly warned he would further strip away rights to the procedure.

Adam Geller, a Republican pollster who polled for Trump’s campaign in 2019, said while the abortion vote has been “really energizing” in states with moderate or somewhat conservatives, Florida is an “obviously more Republican state.”

“What Biden has now in 2024 is the burden of defending his record the last four years,” Geller said. “With all of the things he has to defend in the last four years, abortion is simply going to get watered down and it’s going to get lost in the context of these other issues.”

Support for abortion cuts across party lines and has been winning at the ballot box even in states that voted for Trump and have Republican-majority legislatures.

Voters sided with abortion rights in seven states since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, including Republican-leaning Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.

In a landslide victory for abortion rights supporters, Kansas voters in 2022 rejected a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have stripped residents of abortion rights. Kentucky voters similarly rejected a 2022 ballot measure aimed at denying constitutional protections for abortion. Last year, abortion rights were front and center in key races, including Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure enshrining protections in the state constitution.

Democrats have been reluctant to pump money into Florida — one of the most expensive states to buy campaign advertisement — but immediately sprung into action after Monday’s ruling. Biden’s campaign included Florida in an ad buy Tuesday, hitting Trump on abortion rights.

Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said the state’s high court has provided a longshot opening for Biden to win Florida.

“We’re clear-eyed about how hard it will be to win Florida, but we also know that Trump does not have it in the bag,” said Chávez Rodríguez on a phone call with reporters.

Asked after a speech on Tuesday about Florida’s six-week ban on abortion going into effect, Trump said, “We’ll be making a statement next week on abortion.”

The former president has been threading the needle when it comes to abortion. He routinely takes credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, paving the way for a wave of new restrictions.

But Trump has also repeatedly criticized fellow Republicans for being too hardline on the issue, blaming candidates who opposed exceptions — in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk — for the party’s midterm losses later that year.

And Trump, a New York snowbird turned Florida resident who will also vote on the state’s abortion ballot question, previously called DeSantis’ signing of Florida’s six-week ban on the procedure a “terrible mistake ″ and suggested even anti-abortion activists found it “too harsh.”

Democrats have been striving to be relevant in Florida since 1999 when Republican Jeb Bush was sworn in and the GOP took control of the executive office and the Legislature for the first time. The following year Democrat Al Gore lost Florida by 537 votes, giving George W. Bush the presidency.

During the five-week struggle to settle Florida’s 2000 election, Gore’s strategy was to seek recounts in targeted counties until the Supreme Court stopped the process. A media analysis and ballot review concluded Gore would have still lost under the recounts he sought, but he could have won had he successfully fought for a statewide recount.

Following 2000, Florida supported Bush for reelection, then twice gave the state to Barack Obama before backing Trump for two terms. Republicans have consistently won statewide races for governor, Senate and cabinet, but often by razor margins, raising Democrats’ hopes for the next election cycle only to see them dashed again.

Here’s a small list of issues where Democrats believed they were finally going to win back power in Florida:

— In 2002, Jeb Bush campaigned against a wildly popular ballot proposal to limit school class sizes. The class size amendment passed with overwhelming support, but so did Bush.

— In 2004, Democrats thought anger over losing the 2000 recount and President Bush’s low approval rating were going to help party nominee John Kerry take the state. Bush easily won Florida.

— In 2006, Jeb Bush was being forced out of office by term limits, and Democrats saw the open governor’s seat as a potential pickup. They were miserably wrong, as then-Republican Charlie Crist easily defeated his Democratic challenger.

— In 2010, Democrats mistakenly saw Obama’s 2008 victory as a harbinger for success, only to see Republican Marco Rubio ride the tea party movement to win a Senate seat.

— In 2010, then Democratic chief financial officer Alex Sink, was considered a shoo-in over Republican Rick Scott, then-dogged by his past as the CEO of a hospital chain that paid a record Medicaid fraud fine. Scott won with less than half the vote and was reelected again in 2014, again with less than half the vote.

— In 2016, Democrats hoped having a medical marijuana referendum on the ballot would help boost Hillary Clinton over Trump. It didn’t.

— In 2018, Democrats were convinced that DeSantis’s decision to run as a mini-Trump would make him a loser at the polls. DeSantis won with less than 50% of the vote in an election requiring a recount.

And once DeSantis took office, Republicans overtook Democrats’ advantage in voter registration, DeSantis won reelection in 2022 by a record margin for a Republican, Rubio won reelection by an enormous margin and Republicans made further gains in the Legislature and in Congress. Florida now has more than 5.2 million Republicans compared to fewer than 4.4 million Democrats.

But those who lost the ballot battle are finding some hope, as well, in the nearly 200 pages of opinions released Monday.

The same court that in one case allowed abortion rights to be on the ballot also effectively imposed a six-week abortion ban in how it decided another case.

And sprinkled throughout those opinions and oral arguments are clues that one litigator against abortion rights says might later be used by the court to outlaw abortion, even if Amendment 4 passes.

In February, as he has for decades, Mat Staver stood before the Florida Supreme Court, this time asking the justices not to allow Amendment 4 onto the ballot.

He argued it was misleading and its effects on government so broad it encompassed more than a single subject.

“What are we to do about it?” Justice John Curiel asked.

“Strike it down and not allow it because that cannot go on the ballot,” Staver replied.

He lost that argument in a 4-3 decision that allowed the question on the ballot.

But the court also, in another decision, reversed decades of precedent to find the right to privacy does not extend to abortion, effectively allowing a six-week ban to take effect on May 1.

“Well, we had some really good news, and we had some disturbing news,” Staver said Tuesday from the Liberty Counsel offices in Winter Park, near Orlando.

The good news for him: the court overturning the 1989 case called In Re: T.W.

“We’ve worked for 35 years to overturn that In Re: T.W. decision, and so now it has been overturned,” he said. “That’s a good decision, a six-to-one decision.”

The old case found preborn humans were not constitutional persons, but rather potential life.

Florida Apr 2

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In Monday’s rulings, Staver sees fodder for a future argument that could be used by the court to uphold an even stricter abortion ban than exists now, if it is asked to determine if the unborn have a right to life under Florida’s constitution.

“Yes, I do read that into that,” Staver said. “In fact, the chief justice during the oral argument raised that very issue about Article I, Section 2.”

That part of Florida’s constitution says all natural persons are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, including the right to enjoy and defend life.

In oral arguments, Chief Justice Carlos Muniz asked lawyers how that might impact the court’s debate over whether to allow Amendment 4 on the ballot.

“I don’t know that I could affirmatively say the term ‘natural person’ doesn’t, as matter of ordinary meaning, include the unborn,” he said. “I mean we certainly talk about the unborn that way.”

And in the majority opinion allowing the ballot language, which Muniz joined, the court noted, “The constitutional status of a preborn child under existing Article I, Section 2 presents complex and unsettled questions. Until our decision today to recede from T.W., this Court’s jurisprudence for the past thirty-odd years had assumed that preborn human beings are not constitutional persons … treating the fetus as only ‘potential life.’”

Nothing in the court’s decisions yesterday specifically mentioned “fetal personhood,” the effort Staver and other abortion opponents are undertaking to extend the right to life to the unborn.

But Staver was encouraged by what he did read, including in Muniz’s concurrence, joined by two other justices in the majority, which said in part, “With its reference to the existence of ‘inalienable rights’ in all persons, our constitution’s Declaration of Rights assumes a pre-constitutional, objective moral reality that demands our respect—indeed, a moral order that government exists to protect. The proposed amendment would constitutionalize restrictions on the people’s authority to use law to protect an entire class of human beings from private harm.”

Staver said he reads the reference to the “class of human beings” to include both the unborn and pregnant women.

“With the justices’ comments on this issue,” Staver said, he believed “that personhood is still a clear issue before the court.”

And Staver is preparing to return with a case that lets them resolve that issue.

“I think we have the case set up to be able to go back with another argument at some time in the future to argue the personhood,” Staver said.

So despite losing the ballot battle, Staver said he sees a chance to win a bigger prize for the movement he’s championed.

“I think it’s really opened the door. And I think possibly that’s why the chief justice put that in there, that if this does pass, the Florida Supreme Court’s not out of the picture,” he said.

Asked if he was going to give up if Amendment 4 passes, Staver said, “For 35 years, we’ve had some wins, we’ve had some heartbreaks, we’ve had some losses. But on April 1st, 35 years of work paid off. So we’re never giving up.”

The city has no authority when it comes to abortion laws, but despite this, it was a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. The council’s agenda read, “the City of Hialeah will be communicating its opposition to Amendment Four, a proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment concerning abortion.”

“I think there is a lot of local representatives that have connections with our voters and they like to understand what our point of view is, where we stand on matters,” said Councilwoman Monica Perez, one of the sponsors of the item.

NBC6 political analyst Sean Foreman called it a waste of time.

“This is just another example of the hyper-partisanship that we have in politics these days,” he said. “There is no reason for city officials to go on the record when it comes to abortion policy because cities don’t have any role in the law in the state.”

Decision 2024 Sep 18

Florida to decide on abortion protections, could end 6-week ban in Amendment 4

Abortion Sep 12

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Amendment 4 will ask voters whether or not Florida should protect the right to an abortion.

The summary on the ballot reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

It would end the six-week ban on abortion currently in place.

The Yes on 4 campaign, in favor of abortion rights, is adamant about no government, at any level, having a say on abortion rights.

“Our position about any type of distraction like this is just to ignore it and keep on focusing on what we have to do, which is educate the community on Amendment 4 and they need to say yes, and to vote yes,” said Lisa Zayas of the Yes on 4 campaign.

The court, which was reshaped by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, ruled 6-1 to uphold the state’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, meaning a ban on six weeks could soon take effect. 

“Today’s rulings prove exactly what is at stake at the ballot box,” said Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party. “Florida is now home to one of the strictest abortion bans in the country — a ban so extreme that most women won’t even know they’re pregnant before they pass the cutoff date.”

But come November, that ban could be reversed at the polls. Under a separate 4-3 ruling, voters in Florida will decide whether to approve Amendment 4, which would protect abortion rights and allow women a right to the procedure to the point of fetal viability — often considered around 24 weeks of pregnancy — and even later, if a healthcare provider finds it is needed to protect the life of the mother.⁠

Florida Apr 1

Florida voters will decide whether to protect abortion rights and legalize pot in November

Florida Apr 1

Florida Supreme Court upholds state's 15-week abortion ban, but voters will soon have a say

“This November, it’s not just access to safe, legal abortion that’s on the line — it’s access to emergency medical care, medication abortion and contraception for the millions of women who depend on it each year,” Fried said.

The ruling could give Democrats a boost in the polls in a state that used to be a toss-up in presidential elections. While many voters aren’t enthusiastic about a rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, it could inspire more abortion rights advocates to cast a ballot. Trump won Florida four years ago.

“We must vote yes on this amendment to keep the government out of our exam rooms and make sure Florida families and the doctors who treat them can make the decisions that are right for them,” said Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director of Yes on 4.

Those against the ballot measure believe approving Amendment 4 would lead to “abortion on demand.”

“It has no limits, no restrictions, it allows abortion up to the point of viability, viability is undefined, that is up to the health care worker — that term is also undefined, so it’s vague,” said Anthony Verdugo of the Christian Family Coalition.

Florida will now be one of several states where voters could have a direct say on abortion questions this year.