Florida’s abortion amendment could backfire on Ron DeSantis

Caroline, a woman from Tampa, Florida, was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant with her second child. Her first thought was: could she ever see her daughter again? “The doctors knew that if I didn’t terminate my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life and my daughter would lose her mother,” she says.

Caroline’s story is featured in an ad sponsored by the Floridians Protecting Freedom campaign aimed at galvanizing Florida voters to vote “yes” on Amendment 4, Florida’s abortion initiative. If passed, the initiative would amend the Florida state constitution to prohibit government interference in abortion rights before they become viable. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision allowed states to pass their own laws regarding abortion.

Currently, Florida’s post-Dobbs abortion law makes it a crime to perform or actively participate in an abortion six weeks after gestation. Technically, the ban provides exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking for up to 15 weeks, as well as for saving a woman’s life or preventing “substantial and irreversible” impairment. However, as experts pointed out to Salon — and previous reports have shown — these exceptions are difficult to access. Similarly, women in Florida are still denied care despite these so-called exceptions. The ad featuring the anecdote is part of Floridians Protecting Freedom’s campaign strategy to connect with voters regardless of political affiliation and elevate the issue of abortion as a nonpartisan issue by sharing the personal stories of women like Caroline.

“I fundamentally believe that the way to win these conversations with independents and Republicans is to depoliticize them,” Lauren Brenzel, campaign manager of Yes on 4, said recently at a press conference. “We often say that we are not running a bipartisan campaign, but a nonpartisan campaign, because Democrats, independents and Republicans do not want women in the state of Florida to be harmed by these abortion bans. »

However, the ad was also specifically targeted by the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Specifically, the Florida Department of Health (DOH) sent cease and desist letters to the local television stations that aired the ad, alleging that it could invoke a “sanitary nuisance” law. Floridians Protecting Liberty filed a lawsuit accusing the state of using public resources and government authority to advance the state’s preferred agenda. Recently, a federal judge ordered the DeSantis administration to stop threatening to sue local TV stations, calling the threats “unconstitutional coercion.” These threats are part of an opposition strategy that has intensified in recent weeks, as reported by NBC News.

According to the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab, 70% of Florida voters said they would vote “yes” on Amendment 4. In particular, ballot initiatives in Florida require 60 % of voters to be adopted.

“This is the highest threshold that a campaign in the country must meet, and we are very confident here at the Fairness Project that the campaign in Florida is doing everything it takes to meet this high threshold and is on the path to victory,” Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, said at a news conference “Florida has some of the most compelling provider and patient stories on air right now. of ads and through their earned media and other communications, and they’re just giving us a master class and how to elevate these stories that are so powerful for voters to see.

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Is it possible that abortion is a nonpartisan issue in Florida and that the DeSantis administration’s attempts to intimidate voters are backfiring?

“I don’t know if his intimidation tactics will backfire,” Keisha Mulfort, senior communications strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, told Salon in a telephone interview. “But I want to make it clear that these intimidation tactics are unprecedented.”

Mulfort said the state of Florida has not experienced “election interference on this scale.”

“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” Mulfort emphasized, saying the legal consequences are unclear, but women will continue to suffer because of Florida’s abortion law. “It’s the women who are at risk of having to suffer through these pregnancies, who will continue to bleed in public toilets, or the women like Deborah Dorbert, who must give birth to their children who they know will not survive.”

Mulfort was referring to a second television commercial in which a woman, Dorbert, shares her story of being denied an abortion in 2022, when the fetus had a fatal abnormality. The doctor denied her request to terminate the pregnancy, citing the state’s 15-week gestation limit for abortions — which was in effect before the six-week law took effect in May 2024. She gave birth to her son in March 2023, who died shortly after birth.

Asked about the ads and the federal judge’s order for the DeSantis administration to stop threatening to sue local officials, Jae Williams, communications director for the Florida Department of Health, told Salon via email that the advertisements are “unequivocally false and harmful to public health in Florida.”

“The media continues to ignore the fact that Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Law still protects a mother’s life and includes exceptions for victims of rape, incest and human trafficking,” said Williams said via email.

In a follow-up phone interview with Salon, Brenzel said the Health Department’s comments are “wrong” and show “how much we cannot trust the state government of Florida to be involved in these decisions private medical services.

“The reality is that these so-called exceptions are incredibly limiting,” Brenzel told Salon. “Pregnancy is complicated, and they’re not doctors, so they don’t even know how to make these exceptions workable.”

It’s doctors, she said, who should determine how to provide the best care for their patients.

Either way, abortion is a “winning issue,” said Brenzel, campaign manager of Yes on 4. Indeed, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year suggested that the issue of abortion could have more influence in the 2024 elections than other issues like the economy.

“The amendment could bring out voters who are particularly concerned about the issue of abortion,” Diana Mutz, the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication and director of the Institute for the Study of Citizenship and Communication, told Salon. of politics. “And this has the potential to change people if they normally vote Republican, vote Democrat, both of those things are possible.”