DeSantis Signs Heartbeat Bill into Law, Expands Funding for Pregnant Women and Families

The heartbeat bill that passed the Florida Legislature overwhelmingly was signed into law late on Thursday by Governor Ron DeSantis.

Florida now has a six-week abortion limit ready to take effect if the Florida supreme court rules that the existing 15-week limit is constitutional. National Review spoke to Katie Daniel, the state policy director of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, on what the law addresses and what to expect moving forward.

“A lot of this is building and clarifying our existing long-standing policies,” explained Daniel, referring, for example, to the reaffirmation that chemical abortions cannot be done through tele-health. “The gestational limit coming forward, being much more protective earlier in pregnancy, and the expansion of funding and programs available through the Pregnancy Care Network are the big policy changes,” Daniel added.

Florida legislators regarded an earlier and more comprehensive abortion protection as a policy priority. The law is a follow-up to the 15-week limit passed last year, which is now being challenged in court. Daniel explained that DeSantis and state lawmakers ran on a pro-life platform in the fall 2022 election, touting their 15-week limit, and they were rewarded by voters, who said “we’re going to send more of you to Tallahassee.”

“We are proud to support life and family in the state of Florida,” explained DeSantis in a statement celebrating the Heartbeat Protection Act.

Given that Florida saw an increase in the number of abortions after Dobbs, and also considering what Daniel called Florida’s reputation as a late-term abortion destination, lawmakers were incentivized to act. Daniel explained that legislators are not making a moral judgment about the baby with this law but are instead setting an evidentiary standard of life.

“As an educational tool to talk about human development and how amazing medical technology has gotten, heartbeat was such a good way to do that before the Dobbs case, and now that these laws can go into effect, we’re finding that in states with a broad array of views like Ohio or Georgia or Florida, there is a lot of consensus around it,” Daniel explained, adding that the polling bears this out.

The Heartbeat Protection Act will not go into effect immediately as a ruling is still needed on the constitutionality of the existing 15-week limit.

After Roe v. Wade became the law of the land half a century ago, the Florida supreme court interpreted a right to abortion into the right to privacy expressed in Article 1, Section 23, of the Florida constitution, thereby following the high court in Washington.

“From our standpoint the court got it wrong in 1989,” explained Daniel, referring to a decision from the Tallahassee court entitled In re: TW. “We definitely feel that the state has a very strong argument to overturn that bad precedent and to have the 15-week law and also the heartbeat law go into effect because [the latter is] written as a trigger law based on the outcome of that case.”

Daniel then turned to the numbers. She said that in addition to the heartbeat law representing the will of the voters, the majority of women who obtained abortions felt some type of coercion when they made their decisions. Economic factors were quite significant.

Consequently, Florida has focused on greater funding for pregnant women, for postpartum women, and for young and especially low-income families. “Once you get really great gestational protections in place, the next step is thinking through how can we make it easier and more affordable to raise a family in this state,” Daniel explained.

The law increases state funding for the Pregnancy Care Network, Inc. from $4 million to $25 million. The network is a clearing house for state funding and also has funding sources of its own. It partners with crisis-pregnancy centers throughout the state to provide care for pregnant women. The heartbeat law is intended to allow the network to increase the number of centers it partners with and diversify the types of services it funds.

“There’s a lot more Floridians who will be eligible for these resources,” Daniel said, including adopted families. The eligible time frame for postpartum women will also be expanded.

According to Daniel, the types of resources that can be funded by this pot of money will include non-medical material like baby items and educational material (books, daycare services, etc.). Mentoring, life skills training, and employment training will also now be eligible for funding.

The state budget also has a couple other allocations that are very family-focused, Daniel explained. DeSantis proposed permanent tax cuts that will make a lot of family items tax free. There was a Medicaid extension to expand the amount of time that Medicaid-eligible women receive care postpartum. Additionally, lawmakers are seeking to address maternal mortality in the Florida counties that struggle the most.

“There’s definitely a huge component of this bill aimed at addressing those needs that women identify when they say, ‘I feel like abortion is my only option.’ We’re gonna meet them whatever those needs are and help them feel like whether they parent or give their child up, they feel confident that abortion is not the right option,” Daniel explained.