Florida voters will be asked in November to decide whether the right to abortion – anytime before viability, and anytime “when necessary to protect the health of the patient, as determined by the patient’s health care provider” – is should be codified in the state constitution.
The Florida Supreme Court on Monday ruled4-3, that a question about such a right to abortion may placed on the ballot in November.
The three justices who dissented from the majority opinion, however – Justices Renatha Francis, Jamie Grosshans, and Meredith Sasso – all women – wrote The amendment “misleads” voters, “does not convey the extent of what the amendment actually accomplishes,” and its language includes many “undefined terms,” such as “viability,” “health care provider ,” and “patient health.”
“Voters are unlikely to understand the true effects of this amendment – that they will read the ballot summary and vote based on an informed understanding and acceptance of the uncertainties created by its vague and ambiguous language,” wrote Sasso.
Based on what other states have experienced with similar ballot amendments, the concerns of the three dissenting justices in Florida are likely just a prelude to “misleading” and deceptive activists abortion campaign to Florida voters before November.
The Democratic strategy after the reversal of Roe v. Wade is to portray pro-life states that protect unborn babies from abortion as not caring about pregnant women. One way they have done this is by attempting to blur the lines between abortion and miscarriage.
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In October 2023, for example, Statehouse News Bureau in Ohio led a story about Ohio’s Issue 1 with a headline that refers to “miscarriage care” as another “reproductive right”:
Issue 1 would not only enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio constitution but also provide protection for abortions and other reproductive rights. Questions about those rights prompt discussions.
Last week, Democrat Arizona State Sen. Eva Burch also muddies the waters between abortion and miscarriage use his own situation in life.
“In a speech on the floor of the Arizona Senate on Monday, Democratic lawmaker Eva Burch told her colleagues that she plans to have an abortion after learning that her pregnancy is not viable,” the Associated Press reported on X with a video of Burch’s remarks.
Burch said a few weeks ago she discovered “against all odds” that she was pregnant, and spoke of her “rough journey” with infertility and miscarriage. Despite her history, she said she had given birth to two sons, but ultrasounds and blood tests revealed that her current pregnancy was “again non-progressive and non-viable.”
“I don’t know how many of you have been unfortunate enough to experience a miscarriage before,” she continued, “but I’m not interested in going through it unnecessarily. And right now, the safest and most appropriate treatment for me, and the treatment I would choose, is abortion.”
“Arizonas deserve the freedom and liberty to make those decisions for themselves,” Burch said, spinning her abortion story into one of abortion and “freedom.”
Writing on Washington ExaminerKimberly Ross – who also experienced a miscarriage – mentioned Burch used her “pain and passion” to “persuade voters to support abortion.”
“Except Burch isn’t describing an abortion – he’s describing treatment for a miscarriage,” Ross emphasizes:
A D&C [dilation and curettage] The procedure is standard medical care for miscarriage and nonviability. This is not an elective abortion where the unborn child, with healthy growth and development, is targeted for death simply because he is uncomfortable or unwanted. And it is very, very important to distinguish between the two.
“Miscarriage is a devastating, often inexplicable event,” Ross explains clearly. “Whether it’s a natural expulsion or a D&C to remove pregnancy tissue, one thing is clear: This is not an elective abortion to cause another person’s death.”
Board certified OB/GYNs with both the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) and the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute respond as following the decision of the Supreme Court in Dobbs and the accusation of the left that the reversal of Roe v. Wade will usher in an era where women experiencing miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies will not be allowed medical care.
“It breaks my heart that women are being made to feel scared by the misinformation out there,” said Christina Francis, MD, CEO of AAPLOG, in a CLI “fact check”:
Treatment of ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages or other life-threatening conditions in pregnancy is not the same as an abortion … In rare but tragic situations where the pregnancy puts the mother’s life at risk, there is medical procedures for compassionately separating the mother and her baby and trying to save both lives. The sole purpose of abortion is to produce a dead baby. Women deserve to be empowered with medically accurate information.
Similarly, Ingrid Skop, MD, senior fellow and director of medical affairs at CLI and author of a fact sheets in “Medical Indications for Separation of Mother and Her Unborn Child,” said Pro-life OB/GYNs routinely treat women facing “challenging and even traumatic pregnancies” without “resorting to abortion.”
“In fact, most OB/GYNs do not perform abortions, and that is good news for women’s health, because it is safer for a woman to be treated in a medical setting with access to emergency care than an abortion facility,” Skop added in a point that ties in well with the proposed amendment on the Florida ballot, as Liberty Counsel noted.
The Christian legal ministry has shed more light on the “fraudulent” amendment, observation it is “so extensive that even health or safety regulations are unsustainable. Unscrupulous abortionists will be completely unregulated.”
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver — who argued against the amendment before the Florida Supreme Court — added:
The proposed abortion amendment is the most extreme because it would repeal every law regulating abortion. Except for parental notification, no laws will apply, not even health and safety regulations.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column is from originally appeared.
