Early this morning, the Florida House of Representatives passed a bill protecting unborn children from abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The bill passed with overwhelming support in a nearly party-line 78-39 vote; one Democrat voted for the bill, and one Republican voted against it.
Most Florida Democrats strenuously opposed the bill. “All abortion bans are extreme,” said Democratic representative Carlos G Smith. “They rob women and people of the freedom to make their own decisions.” (“People” here is an oblique reference to the newfangled notion that people other than women can become pregnant and have abortions.)
Republicans in the Florida Senate have already introduced a companion measure to the bill and are slated to consider it later this month once it is moved out of committee. “Having once been a scared teenage mother myself, I understand the turmoil of a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy,” the Senate bill’s sponsor Kelli Stargel said. “Women and children deserve better than abortion.”
In January, Florida governor Ron DeSantis suggested that he would support a 15-week abortion ban, though he didn’t explicitly endorse the bill. “There’s a lot of pro-life legislation. We’re going to be welcoming it. I haven’t looked at every single bill,” he said.
“I think if you look at what’s been done in some of these other states — I mean, when you start talking about 15 weeks where you have really serious pain and heartbeats and all this stuff — having protections I think is something that makes a lot of sense,” DeSantis added.
Florida stands out for having the most permissive abortion laws of any southern state. As of now, abortion is legal in Florida up to 24 weeks’ gestation, well after the unborn child is developed enough to survive outside the womb. This new measure would bring Florida into line with several other pro-life states that are attempting to enact 15-week abortion bans in anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling reversing Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The Arizona Senate, for instance, just passed a similar measure earlier this week. These policies are similar to the Mississippi law at stake in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which considers the constitutionality of 15-week abortion ban.