Voters in Florida will decide on Nov. 5 whether to scrap hard-won legal protections for the unborn and effectively legalize late-term abortion through a constitutional amendment to the Sunshine State’s Declaration of Rights.
Pro-life advocates have shared critical insights with Blaze News regarding the political significance of Florida’s Amendment 4; its implications for the unborn and their advocates both in Florida and out of state; and what it reveals about the pro-abortion movement’s strategy going forward.
Background
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022
Dobbs decision rekindled hopes that the Founders’ long-eroded constitutional federalism might be on the mend and that untold millions of human beings might be spared from franchise abattoirs.
Time will tell whether the forces of centralization will be arrested and reversed. As for the unborn, the legal question of whether and when they can be exterminated has been localized, repeated, and, in
some cases, answered.
Florida Republicans passed SB 300, the Heartbeat Protection Act, early last year.
SB 300 prohibits the slaying of unborn children after six weeks of pregnancy, unless the mother’s life is in danger; the mother is a victim of rape, incest, or human trafficking; or the baby has a fatal fetal abnormality.
The law also expanded eligibility for Florida’s pregnancy support and wellness services network to women who are up to 12 months postpartum and to parents of children under the age of 3 for up to 12 months. This support network, topped up with $25 million annually, provides both material assistance and counseling to parents in need.
“We are proud to support life and family in the state of Florida,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said upon ratifying the legislation. “I applaud the Legislature for passing the Heartbeat Protection Act that expands pro-life protections and provides additional resources for young mothers and families.”
While the anti-abortion legislation enraged the usual suspects, such as
Planned Parenthood and the ACLU of Florida, it also rankled various right-of-center political operatives and personalities.
‘Them winning in Florida I think really represents the end of the pro-life movement.’
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), for instance, was among those who criticized DeSantis for ratifying the legislation,
telling CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that “signing a six-week ban that puts women who are victims of rape and girls who are victims of incest and in a hard spot isn’t the way to change hearts and minds. It’s not compassionate.”
Mace suggested instead that “15 to 20 weeks is the sweet spot here.”
After months of relative quiet, debate about the law picked up nationally when former President Donald Trump questioned the Florida law in a late August NBC News interview.
Trump — who nominated the Supreme Court justices who helped overthrow
Roe and whose running mate
noted in 2022, “If you’re not willing to stand up to the left on abortion, you can’t be trusted on anything else” —
said six weeks “is too short” and that there “has to be more time.”
The Republican also upset some pro-life advocates by insinuating he might even vote for Florida Amendment 4 in November.
Following significant backlash, including from some fair-weather friends, Trump
reversed course. The incident was nevertheless survived by discussions on the right about the perceived political liability of pro-life activism and the place for pro-lifers in the Republican Party.
Florida Amendment 4
In November, voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and Nevada will decide whether to amend their respective state constitutions to guarantee residents the legal right to kill the unborn at various stages of development.
In Florida, the choice has taken the form of
Amendment 4, an initiative sponsored by Floridians Protecting Freedom — a coalition comprising the ACLU of Florida, Planned Parenthood, Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, SEIU 1199 Florida, and various other radical outfits.
If Amendment 4 passes, then the people’s democratically elected representatives will be barred from passing any law prohibiting, penalizing, delaying or restricting abortion “before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider” — meaning both that Florida would fall into line with the most radical of the pro-abortion states and that even Mace’s proposed 15-week “sweet spot” would be out of reach.
Gov. DeSantis has opted not to sugarcoat the decision before Floridians: “If you care about building a culture of life in this state or this country, them winning in Florida I think really represents the end of the pro-life movement,” DeSantis told a crowd in Tampa last month,
reported the Tampa Bay Times.
‘Amendment 4 would be a travesty for our nation.’
Critics have
noted that the amendment is deceptively worded.
Liz Wheeler, host of BlazeTV’s “The Liz Wheeler Show,” told Blaze News, “Amendment 4 is a radical, gruesome abortion policy that would allow abortion up to the moment of birth. This means big, healthy full term babies would be aborted for any reason.”
“Amendment 4 is dishonestly presented as allowing abortion ‘just’ until viability — but what is viability?” continued Wheeler. “The term viability is not defined in the legislation, and viability is not a scientific or ethical concept about when a human life begins anyway, but simply a term that defines, on a moving scale as medical knowledge advances, our capacity to keep that baby alive outside the womb before the baby reaches full term.”
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody
previously highlighted that “even the pro-choice-aligned American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists notes the two medical definitions and urges that ‘the concept of viability of [an unborn baby] is frequently misrepresented or misinterpreted based on ideological principles. This perpetuates incorrect and unscientific understandings of medical terms.'”
Vote No On Amendment 4 Florida has also accused the authors of Amendment 4 of crafting “it to be as vague and deceptive as possible.”
Taryn Fenske, a spokeswoman for the Vote No group, suggested to Blaze News that the reason for the “misleading language” and the amendment’s undefined terms is “because the Soros-backed radicals pushing Amendment 4 know that they need to conceal the shocking reality of how their scheme would endanger women and children in Florida.”
The leftist billionaire has
poured “substantial” funding into the Tides Foundation, which contributed millions of dollars to the group sponsoring the initiative, Floridians Protecting Freedom. Whereas FPF appears to have netted over $51 million in contributions from such deep-pocketed leftist organizations, Ballotpedia indicated the five committees registered to oppose Amendment 4 have together raised less than $4 million.
“Simply put, Amendment 4 would be a travesty for our nation,” stressed Wheeler. “Thousands and thousands of big, healthy babies would be killed in the womb because of it.”
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, among the more outspoken opposition groups,
similarly noted in a statement earlier this year that the amendment “is an extreme proposal that legalizes full-term abortion with no protections for the preborn child, including when the child is capable of feeling pain.”
‘If only people that are pro-life oppose it, it very well might pass.’
“We urge all Floridians of goodwill to stand against the legalization of late-term abortion and oppose the abortion amendment,” continued the bishops’ statement. “In doing so, we will not only protect the weakest, most innocent, and defenseless of human life among us but also countless women throughout the state from the harms of abortion.”
The American College of Pediatricians has also spoken out about the threats posed by Amendment 4.
Dr. Richard Sandler, cochair of the Pro-Life Committee at the ACP, said in a statement shared with Blaze News, “Florida’s Amendment 4 is dangerous to children: it exposes preborn children to abortion until the day of birth and it eliminates parental consent for minors. Additionally, it’s dangerous for women as it removes common sense maternal health and safety regulations.”
According to Florida first lady Casey DeSantis, the amendment would not only eliminate parental consent for minors but also “open the door to taxpayer funded abortions.”
Blaze News reached out to Planned Parenthood for comment but did not receive a response by deadline.
‘Florida would be like every other state with a ballot initiative that failed to defend life.’
To pass, the amendment needs to net at least 60% of the vote.
Recent polling data suggest that the pro-abortion amendment might have the requisite amount of support.
“If you look at the state of Florida, we do not have a pro-life majority,” DeSantis
said last month. “We’ve got a big chunk, but we don’t have a majority. If only people that are pro-life oppose it, it very well might pass.”
Constitutional attorney Catherine Glenn Foster, the CEO of First Rights Global and board member of Democrats for Life of America, told Blaze News that the passage of Amendment 4 would mean that Florida, like every other state that preceded it in putting abortion on the ballot, “would have fallen victim to the abortion ideology that conflates women’s health, reproduction, and abortion. Florida would be like every other state with a ballot initiative that failed to defend life and enshrined abortion as a State constitutional right.”
According to Foster, the passage of the ballot initiative would also require a re-haul of the pro-life agenda (a re-haul she recommends pursuing in any event):
It would then fall to the Florida Legislature to adopt a new full-spectrum life agenda, including maternal and prenatal care, healthcare costs, parental leave, childcare, early childhood education, educational opportunities for parents and students, flexible work accommodations, economic and workforce development, end of life issues, and more.
Contours of victory and next steps
If Amendment 4 fails, then Florida’s
Heartbeat Protection Act will remain the law of the land.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski of the Archdiocese of Miami, told Blaze News in a written response that the defeat of Amendment 4 “would be a tremendous victory for Life and the rights of the unborn.”
“Most Americans are uneasy about abortion and do not endorse what amendment 4 would foist upon us: abortion till the moment of birth, the erosion of parental rights, and exploiting vulnerable women facing a crisis due to their pregnancy.”
‘Conservatives must fervently, loudly champion the lives of these babies, so beautiful and yet so vulnerable.’
Catherine Glenn Foster indicated that a pro-life win would also break a recent trend of ballot setbacks.
“After back to back defeats for Life in 7 states, if Florida voters defeat Amendment 4, Florida will have solidified itself as America’s pro-life defender, the first state in the nation to achieve a win for life in a statewide constitutional ballot initiative on abortion,” Foster told Blaze News.
The successful defeat of the amendment may also serve to energize pro-life efforts further afield and demonstrate to skeptics that protections for life are not necessarily political liabilities.
John Quinn, deputy director of Democrats for Life of America, told Blaze News, “The biggest potential upside of defeating Amendment 4 is that it would be the first ballot measure the pro-life side has won after
Dobbs.”
“Pro-lifers generally struggled to win ballot measures before
Dobbs (but did pass a constitutional amendment in Louisiana, led by pro-life Democrat State Senator Katrina Jackson-Andrews), so this struggle isn’t new, but it has taken on an increased prominence since Dobbs, especially because we are losing pro-life protections in states that would otherwise have them precisely because of ballot measures (Ohio being a tragic example of this),” said Quinn.
Quinn added, “If we have success against Amendment 4 in Florida, hopefully we can replicate that success in other states that put similar measures on the ballot.”
Wheeler told Blaze News that it is critical to continue this work of banning abortion “everywhere for every reason except rare instances where the life of the mother is at risk.”
“Pro-lifers and conservatives must not be afraid to say this. It shouldn’t even be controversial,” said Wheeler. “We’re talking about the killing of babies. Obviously we should protect the lives of unborn children in the womb. Science shows us that life begins at conception. Our society is built on the objective truth that every human life is valuable. What right do we have to kill these babies? Conservatives must fervently, loudly champion the lives of these babies, so beautiful and yet so vulnerable.”
‘Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government.’
When asked by Blaze News about the arguments for pro-life incrementalism or, alternatively, for prioritizing cultural and/or social persuasion over legislative efforts to deconstruct the abortion regime, Wheeler noted that the strategies are not mutually exclusive:
It’s not mutually exclusive to pursue legislative protection for unborn children or fight against the cultural forces that tell women that babies are a burden and tell men that promiscuous sex without the consequences of a baby is manly. Every incremental legislative change that protects an additional life is a victory for life, as long as we are not compromising the moral position that all life must be protected at all times.
Even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops permits the ‘art of the
possible’ as long as the goal is complete protection of the dignity of
life. The problem arises when squishy Republicans don’t believe in the
dignity of all human life, and seek to compromise on abortion morally,
not just as a practical tactic in the fight overall.
Archbishop Wenski answered that the “aim is not to win the debate but to protect the unborn.”
“Our goal is to make abortion not only illegal but unthinkable,” Archbishop Wenski told Blaze News. “But to this end, while not surrendering our ultimate goal, we must be ready to accept what we can get through the legislative process. That’s why we supported the 15 week ban, and now the 6 week ban.”
Florida Right to Life president and Do No Harm Florida co-founder Lynda Bell told Blaze News that it is “better to pursue laws at the state level.”
The Catholic prelate appeared to agree, stating that “obviously at the present time, we can hope to have better legislative results at the state level, unless there are significant changes in the make up of the U.S. Congress.”
Catherine Glenn Foster made clear, however, that change won’t come easy and that “the pushback is hard.”
“Femininity is being weaponized. Earnest words are being twisted to score political points. The abortion side is turning tribal to the point of ferality,” continued Foster. “Planned Parenthood pink pins are like the cover charge to the cool kids club — in Hollywood, New York City, and Silicon Valley. Coastal elites are bullying Main Street America into sacrificing our children. And that is reflected in the votes.”
While federally, there is hope of regaining lost territory, Foster indicated that it’s time now “for a change in the winds, for a new message of hope and inspiration. We have to persuade the people who believe that abortion is necessary or a good, or worse still, the people who never think about it at all. And as we do that, we must move forward at every level of government to protect all human life, because every life is inherently, intrinsically valuable, and must be cherished and supported in that. That requires full-spectrum life legislation.”
To move the needle on making abortion unthinkable, Archbishop Wenski appeared to be on the same page, noting, “We need to continue to form consciences through education; also, we need to work to help support vulnerable women to choose life rather than choosing to the end the life of their child because of economic or social pressures.”
When addressing the matter of the continued need to dismantle the abortion regime, Wheeler quoted Mother Teresa as saying, “Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.”
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