Dr. Tamberly “Tammy” McCarus speaks at a Doctors Against Amendment 4 press conference organized by Florida Gov. DeSantis and the anti-abortion Physicians Against Amendment 4 group. Credit: Gov. Ron DeSantis/Facebook

With Election Day less than two weeks away, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis organized a slew of press conferences with anti-abortion doctors around the state this week in a last-ditch effort to defeat Florida’s Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would overturn a six-week abortion ban DeSantis signed into law and legalize abortion in Florida up to viability, if approved by voters.

One of the doctors he invited to join him at a press conference in Central Florida was Dr. Tamberly McCarus, a licensed “pro-life” OB-GYN and volunteer medical director of Choices Women’s Clinic, a Christian pregnancy center that poses as an abortion clinic in an effort to lure pregnant people in and convince them not to get an abortion. They’ve bragged about it in their email newsletters. Such pregnancy centers, often run by churches or faith-based nonprofits, are also known as crisis pregnancy centers, unregulated pregnancy centers, or simply fake abortion clinics.

In Florida, these “clinics” are not obligated to follow patient privacy laws and aren’t required to have licensed healthcare professionals on staff in order to operate, even if they offer services like STI testing and ultrasounds. Choices Women’s Clinic, based in Orlando, is explicitly anti-abortion in nature and recently opened a third location in Kissimmee. The goal of the new location, according to one of their websites, is to “CHANGE abortion in Orlando. Until there are ZERO.”

Choices’ medical director McCarus on Wednesday — who is also affiliated with AdventHealth — took to the stage with DeSantis at the Grove Bible Chapel in Winter Garden, where she described Florida’s Amendment 4 as “extreme” and “radical,” saying it “simply goes too far.”

“The amendment is strictly a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” McCarus claimed. “We don’t like to be lied to in Florida. We’re too smart for that.”

Recent scientific studies have found that higher mortality rates for both infants after the Dobbs reversal and mothers in states with abortion bans, and news nonprofits ProPublica and the Texas Tribune have reported on the avoidable deaths of pregnant women in Georgia and Texas.

The ballot summary for Florida’s Amendment 4, per the Florida Division of Elections office, 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.”

Viability, under Florida statutes, is defined as “the stage of fetal development when the life of a fetus is sustainable outside the womb through standard medical measures.” This occurs at approximately 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Under Florida law, currently, abortion is banned after six weeks of pregnancy, with narrow exceptions that doctors — who can be criminally charged for violating the law — have described as “confusing” and insufficient to address legal gray areas.

“The doctor needs to be the person who’s making this decision with a woman, not the Legislature,” said Dr. Cori Baill, a board certified OB-GYN and professor at UCF College of Medicine, during a media roundtable this week where doctors advocated in support of Amendment 4.

“Amendment 4 helps, actually, to protect women,” argued Dr. Matthew Wollenschlaeger, a board-certified OB-GYN in Orlando, who also supports Amendment 4. “It allows women to make that decision with their physician, with their families, with whoever they want, to decide whether to continue a pregnancy [or] to end of pregnancy, depending on what the circumstances are.”

More than 850 doctors this week signed a letter in support of Florida’s Amendment 4, a citizen-led initiative spearheaded by the political committee Floridians Protecting Freedom.

McCanus, in addition to volunteering as medical director for the anti-abortion Choices Women’s Clinic, also launched an unsuccessful campaign for elected office in 2020. According to news website Florida Politics, McCanus ran for a Florida House seat as a Republican. As Ballotpedia notes, she never even made it onto the ballot.

Other doctors that DeSantis invited to join his anti-Amendment 4 tour this week include a medical advisor and board member for the anti-abortion Heartbeat of Miami Crisis Pregnancy Center (which received $342,621 in state funds last year) and a “pro-life” radiologist DeSantis appointed to the Florida Board of Medicine earlier this year.

The DeSantis administration has launched a multifaceted (and expensive — using your money) anti-Amendment 4 campaign in recent weeks, weaponizing state agencies to threaten media outlets for airing pro-Amendment 4 ads and gaslight doctors over their concerns that Florida’s current abortion ban is threatening healthcare providers’ ability to provide basic, necessary medical care to pregnant women.

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This article appears in Oct 23-29, 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.