This occurred just two days before the Florida Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case that could decide the fate of abortion access in Florida and across the Southern United States.
“There is no reason for politicians and judges with no medical training or expertise to be making health care decisions for Floridians,” said Dr. Frederick Southwick, a practicing internist and infectious disease specialist of 30 years from Gainesville.
Wednesday’s press conference was organized by the Committee to Protect Health Care, a national mobilization of medical professionals in support of “pro-patient care.”
Several Florida doctors who are members of the group, including Southwick, joined the virtual call to warn of the dangers of abortion restrictions and to voice support for a statewide campaign launched in May to expand abortion rights in Florida.
As of last July, abortion in Florida is currently legal up to 15 weeks of pregnancy. Before that, the limit was 24 weeks. A more restrictive six-week limit on abortion procedures was signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in April, but whether that goes into effect is dependent upon a legal challenge to the 15-week ban that will be heard by Florida Supreme Court justices on Friday.
The seven-member Florida Supreme Court, packed with five justices appointed by DeSantis, will hear arguments from both plaintiffs and defendants to determine whether the 15-week limit violates a right to privacy within Florida's state constitution.
That provision of the constitution has previously been interpreted by the courts to include abortion.
But advocates for abortion rights, including healthcare professionals caring for pregnant patients on the frontlines, warn that previous interpretations may not be upheld.
As the Tampa Bay Times points out, Florida's highest court is “reliably conservative,” and if justices determine the 15-week ban is not unconstitutional, the six-week ban will go into effect 30 days after the determination.
“We hope that the justices will rule in favor of Floridians’ privacy and personal freedoms and to make their own medical decisions,” said Dr. Nancy Staats, a retired anesthesiologist and critical care physician in Jacksonville.
But, with the majority of justices being DeSantis appointees, “we must be prepared,” she added, for the opposite. “We must do all we can to protect Floridians’ freedom to access abortion and health care providers’ ability to offer the care our patients need without governmental interference.”
Thousands of Florida residents are already on board. In May, a coalition of groups in support of abortion rights launched a multimillion-dollar ballot initiative campaign, dubbed Floridians Protecting Freedom, to expand abortion access in Florida from its current 15-week limit to medical fetal viability, which is about 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Over 200 local, state and national organizations are involved with the campaign, which needs to gather 891,523 verified signatures by Feb. 1 to get the initiative on the 2024 statewide ballot.
“We must do all we can to protect Floridians’ freedom to access abortion and health care providers’ ability to offer the care our patients need without governmental interference.”
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Last month, the campaign announced they'd already gathered more than 600,000 signatures from Floridians through a boots-on-the-ground petition-gathering effort, using both volunteers and paid staff.
So far, about half of those signatures have been verified, according to the state Division of Elections Office, meaning they've gathered enough to trigger a state Supreme Court review of their proposed ballot language.
The high court, admittedly packed with conservative justices, must verify that the proposal includes only a single subject and would not mislead voters.
If it does make it onto the ballot, the initiative would still need over 60% of voters in support to pass, under Florida law. Similar progressive policies such as a minimum wage increase, restoring felon voting rights, and the legalization of medical marijuana have also passed through ballot initiatives in Florida over the last decade.
According to ballot language submitted by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the abortion rights initiative, if approved, would amend the state’s constitution to clarify 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.”
More than 100 healthcare providers have already signed onto a letter in support.
“Nobody should be forced to put their life at risk because of some politician’s extremist beliefs,” said Dr. Cecilia Grande, an OB-GYN from Miami, on Wednesday. “This is why doctors are carefully watching our Supreme Court, and that’s why we're also calling on Floridians to help put abortion on the ballot.”
Lauren Brenzel, executive director of the Floridians Protecting Freedom campaign, says they’re confident they’ll reach their goal.
“At this point, even with record heat this summer, we’re ahead of schedule to ensure we hit all of our required benchmarks by the end of the calendar year,” Brenzel told Orlando Weekly in an emailed statement.
And that includes more than just voters from Democratic-leaning strongholds, such as Orlando, St. Petersburg and Miami (although even many Democratic areas have trended redder in recent years, a shift in part attributed to a pandemic-era migration to the Sun Belt).
The number of signatures gathered for the proposal must include signatures from voters in at least half of the congressional districts of the state, under the Florida Constitution.
As of last year, when a red wave swept through Florida, easily securing DeSantis a second term as governor, the state’s been characterized as a red state conquered by Republicans, no longer the “purple” swing state that went for Democrats like former President Barack Obama not just once, but twice.
Brenzel, however, contends that support for abortion access has consistently remained strong among Florida voters, including registered Republicans.
“This simply isn’t a partisan issue among real Floridians, across the political spectrum,” argued Brenzel. “We’ve talked with our petition-gatherers, including in red areas, and they largely report that as soon as most people hear what the petition is, they sign it.”
Staats, the physician from Jacksonville, similarly pointed to examples of voters in several other states reaffirming their support for abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion last June. Not just traditionally blue states, but states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana as well.
The dangers of maintaining a 15-week abortion ban in Florida, or a stricter six-week ban, are clear, said Staats. According to data from state health regulators, more than 90 percent of abortions in Florida occur within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy as it is.
Of the small percentage performed after 15 weeks, “many of them occur under the most tragic of circumstances,” Staats emphasized.
For example, if a pregnant person’s water breaks early — after 15 weeks but before fetal viability — this could put them at risk for infection, said Southwick, the infectious disease specialist.
Under Florida's current law, doctors must be able to prove a patient's life is in jeopardy in order to perform an abortion after 15 weeks, but that may sometimes result in doctors sending patients home to await a worsening condition, risking life-threatening complications, before they're able to legally intervene.
This is having an effect not just on patient care, but their healthcare providers as well. A large number of obstetrics and gynecology doctors and nurses are leaving the state of Florida, he said, “because they cannot practice under these circumstances.”
“Women’s health is being endangered not only because of the law, but because of a reduction in OB-GYN[s],” he added.
Staats, the Jacksonville doctor, is hopeful that regardless of what comes out of the Florida Supreme Court, there’s a path forward for reestablishing stronger abortion protections.
“We need to be prepared, and we need to try and get this initiative on the ballot and let Florida’s citizens decide.”
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