By ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE, Related Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – Gov. Ron DeSantis is predicted to signal a 15-week abortion ban into legislation after Florida’s legislature joined the development of Republican-led states anticipating a US Supreme Court docket resolution that would sharply restrict abortion rights in America.
DeSantis, a Republican, has signaled his help for the proposal, which was accepted within the GOP-controlled statehouse Thursday evening after an emotional debate that always veered into painful, private tales. The governor’s workplace didn’t instantly return an electronic mail searching for remark.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, responded in a tweet Friday: “Final evening, the Republican-controlled Florida legislature handed a harmful invoice that might severely limit ladies’s entry to reproductive well being care.” My administration is not going to stand for the continued erosion of ladies’s constitutional rights. “
Republicans throughout the nation are transferring to duplicate a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi that the Supreme Court docket appears poised to uphold, doubtlessly weakening or overturning Roe v. Wade, in a case anticipated to be determined this summer time. In that case, Florida’s laws may weaken the state’s place as a vacation spot for girls all through the South whose states have extra restrictive abortion legal guidelines.
Political Cartoons
“Entry to care within the South is being decimated,” mentioned Laura Goodhue, govt director of the Florida Alliance of Deliberate Parenthood Associates, including that the passage of the invoice alerts that “your proper to bodily autonomy will depend on the place you reside.”
The state presently permits abortions as much as 24 weeks of being pregnant, with no exceptions thereafter for victims of rape or incest, in response to the Guttmacher Institute.
The Florida invoice accommodates exceptions if the abortion is critical to save lots of a mom’s life or stop severe damage to the mom, or if the fetus has a deadly abnormality confirmed by two docs. It will go into impact July 1, 2022.
Republicans rejected a number of makes an attempt by Democrats so as to add exceptions for rape, incest or human trafficking. Supporters mentioned it is not a complete ban and nonetheless offers ladies sufficient time to contemplate whether or not to get an abortion. In addition they referred to as it fairly restricted, saying state statistics present solely 6% of Florida’s abortions occurred final yr after the primary trimester, or after the eleventh week. Of those, 17 ladies and ladies had been impregnated by way of rape or incest.
“The one factor we’re asking on this invoice is that no matter resolution you make, you do it earlier than the 15 weeks,” mentioned Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia.
Some lawmakers revealed their very own abortions and experiences with sexual assault because the measure moved by way of the GOP-controlled statehouse.
Sen. Lauren Guide, a Democrat who turned the ache of being sexually abused by her nanny right into a profession of serving to different survivors, tearfully revealed she was additionally drugged and raped by a number of males when she was a younger teenager. She implored senators to permit exemptions for rape, incest or human trafficking.
“It isn’t OK to drive somebody who’s been sexually assaulted and impregnated to hold that being pregnant to time period if they do not need too, it is simply not,” Guide mentioned. “And if a lady or a woman wants greater than 15 weeks to determine, we must always be capable to give that to her.”
When the invoice handed the GOP-controlled Home final month, Republican Rep. Dana Trabulsy advised lawmakers she beforehand had an abortion however has “regretted it on a regular basis since.”
“That is the proper to life and to surrender life is unconscionable to me,” she mentioned.
GOP lawmakers in West Virginia and Arizona have launched 15-week abortion bans much like the Mississippi legislation. Republicans in different states have modeled laws after a Texas legislation, which the Supreme Court docket allowed to face pending appeals, that successfully bans abortions after six weeks.
White Home officers hosted a roundtable dialogue with abortion rights advocates and Democratic state lawmakers on Thursday in regards to the Florida invoice in addition to Republican restrictions in different states, expressing a dedication to “exploring each possibility to guard reproductive well being care.”
Copyright 2022 The Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials will not be printed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.