Marchers on Orlando’s Church Street during the January 2023 rally marking the 50-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Credit: Photo by Matt Keller Lehman

After facing an aggressive opposition campaign from anti-abortion activists and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida voters have rejected Amendment 4, which sought to reverse Florida’s six-week abortion ban and enshrine abortion rights in the Florida Constitution. The proposed constitutional amendment would have guaranteed the right to abortion up to the point of fetal viability — equal to about 24 weeks of pregnancy — and would have limited anti-abortion Florida legislators from restricting abortion access any further.

About 57 percent of Florida voters voted in favor of Amendment 4, according to the AP, with 91 percent of votes counted — but it needed at least 60 percent of voters to approve the measure for it to pass.

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The defeat of the measure is a massive blow to an effort by abortion rights advocates to limit government interference in abortion and to restore abortion rights in Florida to where they had been before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade in 2022. Titled “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” the proposal needed the support of at least 60 percent of voters in order to pass.

Although it didn’t pass, it did prove more popular than DeSantis: Amendment 4 received about 5.9 million votes and counting, compared to the 4,614,210 votes that DeSantis received during his 2022 reelection campaign.

“We are profoundly disappointed with today’s result that reflects the will of only a minority of voters,” said Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, and a leader in the Yes on 4 campaign. “Nevertheless, a majority of voters supported Amendment 4, sending a powerful message to politicians that the government has no business interfering in personal medical decisions. Clearly, most Floridians rejected the state’s near-total abortion ban.”

“As supporters of abortion access, we are the majority, and we aren’t going anywhere,” Goodhue added.

Polling for Amendment 4 showed support slipping in the months before the election, as coordinated opposition campaigns from the DeSantis administration and a motley crew of anti-abortion groups spread misinformation and attempted to frame supporters as liars.

Altogether, advocates knocked on thousands of doors in Florida to get out the vote for Amendment 4, sent texts, and made hundreds of thousands of calls. Student groups mobilized young voters on college and university campuses, men mobilized other men, and while many of key organizations behind Amendment 4 — such as Planned Parenthood and the labor union SEIU — skew liberal, the campaign also reached across party lines and managed to secure the support of some Republicans and independent voters as well with their libertarian, “keep government out of my doctor’s office” messaging.

The ballot summary for Amendment 4 reads 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.” Despite rampant disinfo making the rounds, it does not affect a parental notification requirement in the Florida Constitution for minors seeking abortion care.

Abortion rights were on the ballot in 10 states this November, including Florida, but Florida’s measure may have been the most closely watched. Students for Life Action, a national anti-abortion advocacy organization, shared in an email this week that the group had “invested significant resources in Florida” in an effort to defeat Amendment 4.

The measure also faced an aggressive anti-abortion campaign from DeSantis and his administration, weaponized — on the taxpayer’s dime — to threaten TV stations that aired pro-Amendment 4 ads with jail time and accuse the Yes on 4 campaign of ballot petition fraud. Nearly 1 million Floridians signed petitions in support of placing Amendment 4 on the ballot, according to the state Division of Elections Office, surpassing the minimum 891,523 needed.

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DeSantis himself toured the state in recent weeks with anti-abortion healthcare providers to spread misinformation about Amendment 4 and what it would do, if passed. Opponents argued, for instance, that Amendment 4 would gut a requirement under Florida law for minors to first obtain parental consent before getting an abortion (an untrue claim). They also argued it would allow women to get “late-term abortions” far into pregnancy — something that rarely happens, and is generally only performed in rare cases of life-threatening conditions or serious/fatal fetal abnormalities.

According to data from the CDC, less than 1 percent of abortions in the U.S. in 2021 occurred after 21 weeks. The vast majority of terminated pregnancies occur within the first 13 weeks. The American Civil Liberties Union described this “late-term abortion” talking point from opponents as a “falsehood” intended “to stoke fear, shame and hate.”

Amendment supporters — including some conservatives — argued that the decision to terminate one’s pregnancy should be a decision made by a pregnant person and their doctor, not by politicians. Supporters also argued that Florida’s current abortion ban restricts access before many people even know they’re pregnant, and offers insufficient, largely inaccessible exceptions.

As DeSantis traveled the state with anti-abortion activists, a group of more than 850 doctors signed a letter last month in support of Amendment 4, describing Florida’s abortion ban as “dangerous.” The ban, they said, forces doctors into a position where they could be charged with a felony, lose their medical license, and face prison time for violations of the law. “We must choose between following an unyielding law and denying our patients essential medical care, or providing that care while risking loss of our licenses and even facing criminal charges,” the doctors wrote, in a letter distributed by Floridians Protecting Freedom’s Yes on 4 campaign.

Investigations by outlets such as ProPublica have identified preventable deaths in states with similarly restrictive abortion bans, like Georgia and Texas, where women have died because of delays in care. While opponents of Amendment 4 have called this medical malpractice, healthcare providers have shared that current exceptions to Florida’s ban — including to save the life of the mother — are “unworkable in practice leading to numerous cases of delays and denials of care for medical emergencies and severe fetal anomalies.”

This defeat for abortion rights advocates keeps in place a restrictive ban affecting millions of women of reproductive age in Florida and in other neighboring states that fully ban abortion or severely restrict it. The closest state to get an abortion outside of Florida is North Carolina — where abortion is banned at 12 weeks — or Virginia, where abortion is legal up to the third trimester.

Abortion bans disproportionately hurt pregnant people who are poor, uninsured, likely already have at least one kid, and who can’t afford to travel out of state to access abortion care. Nonprofit abortion funds, or groups that seek to help provide financial assistance for those who can’t afford to leave, have warned they are seeing a depletion in funds, despite seeing an influx in people coming to them for help.

According to new state data, the number of abortions reported in Florida in the first 10 months of 2024 is down nearly 19 percent compared to the same period last year. There are about 50 licensed clinics in Florida, currently, but with severe restrictions on abortion access likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future, the state could see closures seen in other states with similarly restrictive bans.

As Florida politics reporter Jacob Ogles pointed out on X (formerly known as Twitter), Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis himself won his reelection to the governor’s office in 2022 with just 59.4 percent of the vote in what was admittedly a low-turnout midterm election. This means, if DeSantis were himself a constitutional amendment, he wouldn’t have passed either.

This story has been updated to include comment from Laura Goodhue, affiliated with the Yes on 4 campaign.

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This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2024.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.