The assault on abortion access continues to rage despite Democratic control of the House and Senate. While the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH Woman) Act of 2019 and the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2019 promise to expand abortion access at a federal level, the real battle over abortion—and who can access it—plays out on the state level.
“These bans introduce additional financial hardship because those who need an abortion later in pregnancy now have to travel to different states.”
It’s no surprise that Southern states have highly limited access to abortion. Some of the nation’s most regressive bills, such as six-week bans, fetal remains burial laws, and judicial bypass, are commonplace.
While many of these bills are unenforceable due to their unconstitutionality, they are nonetheless extremely dangerous. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a total of twenty-four states and territories in the United States have laws or provisions written into their state constitutions that would automatically ban abortion if the federal right to abortion were to fall. In essence, if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned—a likely scenario given the extremely conservative makeup of the Supreme Court—almost every state in the U.S. South would outlaw abortion outright.
Except for one: Florida.
Not many people see Florida as a bastion of reproductive freedom. Despite a history of conservative politicians and current hostility toward abortion, the state actually has no trigger laws or Constitutional abortion bans in place. If Roe falls, pregnant people from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and likely the Carolinas will make their way to Florida to access abortion care.
It would be disastrous, then, for politicians to undermine the potential safety that Florida offers pregnant people by making the procedure even harder to access today. There are currently a slew of laws already on the books that make abortion difficult to access. According to the Guttmacher Institute, these include regulations that:
- Require patients to receive biased state-mandated counseling designed to discourage them from obtaining an abortion.
- Bar the use of the state’s public insurance to cover the cost of an abortion unless their life is in danger.
- Require that minors notify their parents or guardians of their procedure unless they obtain a judicial bypass.
- Mandate a medically unnecessary ultrasound and make doctors explicitly ask patients if they would like to view it.
- Ban all abortions after twenty-four-weeks.
The overwhelming number of regulations hasn’t stopped Republican lawmakers from attempting to add more.
For instance, Florida Senate Bill 744/House Bill 351, officially titled “Protection of a Pain-capable Unborn Child from Abortion,” unilaterally prevents anyone from obtaining an abortion on or after the twentieth week of pregnancy.
Despite there being no conclusive evidence that fetuses can feel pain at any point during pregnancy, this bill is intentionally meant to deceive unaware people into thinking that fetuses are more important than the actual pregnant person.
These politicians do not care about fetal pain. They certainly don’t care about the pain of their living, breathing constituents who are minors, 55 percent of whom are living in poverty, compared 14.4 percent of all children nationally. This bill is just another way that anti-abortion lawmakers are trying to control the lives and futures of pregnant people.
“Our callers are reaching out to us because they are facing a barrier to abortion access,” says Kris Lawler, intake volunteer and board member of the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund. Despite the ability of states to pass laws until the burden on the patient becomes undue, Lawler isn’t buying that these bans aren’t exactly that. “It’s supposed to be an undue burden, but every single person we talk to is facing some type of hurdle or burden. These bans, on top of what they are already facing, are undue.”
Amber Gavin, an employee of A Woman’s Choice, an independent clinic in Florida, is already familiar with the effects of a twenty-week ban because of one of the clinic’s other locations in North Carolina, where there is a nineteen-week ban in place.
“The majority of all abortions across the country are done earlier in pregnancy,” Gavin says, “but bans like this actually delay care. They don’t delay people needing that care. These bans introduce additional financial hardship because those who need an abortion later in pregnancy now have to travel to different states.”
This means, she explains, “multiple days off from work, child care (because most people who are seeking an abortion already have children), the costs of hotels and flights. And, of course, the further along in pregnancy the person is, the more the procedure will cost.”
The Guttmacher Institute found that if this bill is passed, “the average one-way driving distance for a Florida woman of reproductive age to a clinic that could provide abortion care at or after twenty weeks would increase from fourteen miles to 469 miles—more than thirty times as far. Put another way, that would be a nearly eight-hour road trip each way on average, if driving nonstop at sixty miles per hour.”
Another Florida bill being considered is SB 1664/HB 1221, which would outlaw all abortions on the basis of the disability of the fetus.
Don’t be fooled: Republicans in office pushing these bills only care about disabled people before they’re born. When the living disabled community requires health care, aid, and accommodations, those same Republicans are nowhere to be found.
Another bill is particularly grotesque. House Bill 1437 would require people to choose to either cremate or bury the remains of the pregnancy, or else they or the abortion provider will face punishments.
“It is such a waste of time for our elected officials to focus yet again on banning abortion,” said U.S. Representative Val Demings of Florida in a local town hall. “I fully support a woman’s right to choose. My gosh, can’t we get over this and focus on the things that really help to improve the quality of life for people who are suffering in this country?”
And Florida isn’t the only state mulling new anti-abortion laws. Five states have enacted laws preventing abortion based on fetal anomalies. Dozens of states have tried to introduce twenty-week abortion bans based on the false notion that fetuses can feel pain after that time, and it’s even been introduced as HR 36 in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Elected representatives in these and other states need to hear from their constituents who want to protect access to safe and legal abortion.