Voters in Florida will be asked in November to decide whether a right to abortion – at any time prior to viability, and at any time “when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider” – should be codified in the state’s constitution.
The Florida Supreme Court on Monday ruled, 4-3, that a question regarding such a right to abortion may be placed on the ballot in November.
The three justices who dissented from the majority opinion, however – Justices Renatha Francis, Jamie Grosshans, and Meredith Sasso – all women – wrote the amendment “misleads” voters, “fails to convey the breadth of what the amendment actually accomplishes,” and includes in its language numerous “undefined terms,” such as “viability,” “health care provider,” and “patient’s health.”
“I find it highly unlikely that voters will understand the true ramifications of this amendment – that they will read the ballot summary and vote based on an informed understanding and acceptance of the uncertainties posed by its vague and ambiguous language,” Sasso wrote.
Based on what other states with similar ballot amendments experienced, the concerns of the three dissenting Florida justices are likely only a precursor to the “misleading” and deceptive campaign abortion activists will unleash on Florida voters prior to November.
The Democrat strategy after the overturning of Roe v. Wade has been to portray pro-life states that protect unborn babies from abortion as uncaring of pregnant women. One way they’ve done this is by attempting to blur the lines between abortion and miscarriage.
In October 2023, for example, Statehouse News Bureau in Ohio led a story about Ohio’s Issue 1 with a headline that referred to “miscarriage care” as another “reproductive right”:
Issue 1 would not only enshrine abortion rights into Ohio’s constitution but would also provide care for miscarriages and other reproductive rights. Questions about those rights are prompting discussions.
Last week, Democrat Arizona State Sen. Eva Burch also muddied the waters between abortion and miscarriage using her own life circumstances.
“In a speech on the Arizona Senate floor Monday, Democratic lawmaker Eva Burch told her colleagues she plans to get an abortion after learning her pregnancy is no longer viable,” the Associated Press reported on X along with a video of Burch’s remarks.
Burch said a few weeks ago she discovered that “against all odds” she was pregnant, and cited her “rough journey” with infertility and miscarriage. Despite her history, she said she was able to give birth to two sons, but ultrasounds and blood tests revealed her current pregnancy “is once again not progressing and is not viable.”
“I don’t know how many of you have been unfortunate enough to experience a miscarriage before,” she continued, “but I am not interested in going through it unnecessarily. And right now, the safest and most appropriate treatment for me, and the treatment that I choose is abortion.”
“Arizonans deserve the freedom and the liberty to make those decisions for themselves,” Burch said, spinning her story of miscarriage into one of abortion and “freedom.”
Writing at the Washington Examiner, Kimberly Ross – who also experienced miscarriage – noted Burch used her “pain and passion” to “encourage voters to support abortion.”
“Except Burch isn’t describing an abortion — she’s describing treatment for a miscarriage,” Ross underscored:
A D&C [dilation and curettage] procedure is standard medical care for a miscarriage and non-viability. It is not an elective abortion whereby the unborn child, with healthy development and growth, is targeted for death just because he or she is inconvenient or unwanted. And it’s very, very important to distinguish between the two.
“Miscarriage is a devastating, often unexplained event,” Ross clearly explained. “Whether it’s a natural expulsion or a D&C to remove pregnancy tissue, one thing is clear: It’s not an elective abortion to cause the death of another human being.”
Board certified OB/GYNs with both the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) and the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute responded as much following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs and the left’s accusation that the overturning of Roe v. Wade would bring about an era in which women experiencing miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies would not be allowed medical care.
“My heart is breaking that women are being made to feel fearful by the misinformation that’s out there,” said Christina Francis, M.D., CEO of AAPLOG, in a CLI “fact check”:
Treating ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages or other life-threatening conditions in pregnancy is not the same thing as an abortion … In the rare but tragic situations where a pregnancy puts the mother’s life at risk, there are medical procedures for compassionately separating the mother and her baby and working to save both lives. The only intent of an abortion is to produce a dead baby. Women deserve to be empowered by medically-accurate information.
Similarly, Ingrid Skop, M.D., senior fellow and director of medical affairs at CLI and author of a fact sheet on the “Medical Indications for Separating a Mother and Her Unborn Child,” said pro-life OB/GYNs regularly treat women facing “challenging and even traumatic pregnancies” without “resorting to abortion.”
“In fact, the overwhelming majority of OB/GYNs do not perform abortions, and that’s good news for women’s health, as it is much safer for the woman to be treated in a medical setting with access to emergency care than at an abortion facility,” Skop added in a point that ties in well with the proposed Florida ballot amendment, as Liberty Counsel noted.
The Christian legal ministry shed more light on the “deceptive” amendment, observing it is “so broad that not even health or safety regulations will survive. Unscrupulous abortionists will be totally unregulated.”
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver – who argued against the amendment before the Florida Supreme Court – added:
This proposed abortion amendment is the most extreme because it will wipe out every law regulating abortion. Other than parental notification, no law will survive, not even health and safety regulations.
