Florida’s Six-week Abortion Ban Takes Effect Amidst Healthcare Concerns

Florida’s restriction on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women are unaware they are pregnant, took effect Wednesday, and some doctors are afraid that women in the state will no longer have access to necessary health care.

Dr. Leah Roberts, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist at Boca Fertility in Boca Raton, claims that anti-abortion laws established in Florida and other red states are vaguely drafted by people who do not comprehend medical science. The laws apply not just to women seeking therapeutic abortions, which are operations to terminate viable pregnancies for personal reasons, but also to nonviable pregnancies in women who want to have children.

“We’re coming in between them and their doctors and preventing them from getting care until it’s saving their lives, sometimes at the expense of their fertility,” Roberts went on to say. The new ban makes an exception for saving a woman’s life, as well as in cases of rape and incest, but Roberts said healthcare workers are still prohibited from performing an abortion on a nonviable pregnancy that they know will become lethal — such as when the fetus is missing organs or implanted outside the uterus — until it becomes deadly.

“We’re being told that we have to wait until the mother is septic to be able to intervene,” Roberts went on to say. Aside from the physical danger, there is also the psychological agony of carrying a pregnancy that the mother knows will never be healthy, according to Roberts.

“They’re feeling the kicks for months after they’re being told that they’re never going to have a live birth,” Roberts told me. “And it’s just horrifying when you could take care of it at 20 weeks, and they could move on, and they could get pregnant with their next pregnancy and be able to hold their babies that much sooner.”

She stated that one major issue with the prohibition is that doctors who do emergency abortions must first master the techniques for therapeutic abortions. So, if most abortions are prohibited, the next generation of doctors will be unable to acquire the skills required to execute an emergency abortion.

Roberts expressed concern that the limits will cause seasoned doctors to leave Florida, as they did in other states that have banned abortion. “We’re going to have less access to care for our general population, even if it’s just basic maternity care and normal OB-GYN care because people are leaving,” Roberts told the audience.

Furthermore, women will have to travel long distances to receive abortions. Florida Access Network executive director Stephanie Pineiro stated that the organization, which helps fund abortions, anticipates significant cost increases. She thinks that it will cost about $3,000 for a woman to go to another state for an abortion. After 12 weeks, the closest place would be Virginia or Illinois; before 12 weeks, it would be North Carolina.

“It’s very emotionally draining and challenging to deal with these types of barriers and have to leave your home,” said Pineiro. The Florida Supreme Court, which has five of its seven members nominated by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, decided 6-1 last month to preserve the state’s prohibition on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, paving the way for the six-week ban. The 15-week ban, which DeSantis enacted in 2022, was enforced while being contested in court. The Legislature established a six-week prohibition a year later, but it did not go into effect until a month after the 2022 legislation was affirmed.

Republican state Sen. Erin Grall, who sponsored the six-week ban, previously stated that bodily autonomy does not cover abortions.

“We live in a time where the consequences of our actions are an afterthought and convenience has been a substitution for responsibility,” he continued, “and this is unacceptable when it comes to the protection of the most vulnerable.”

Voters may be able to enshrine abortion rights in Florida’s constitution after a separate state Supreme Court verdict permitted a proposed constitutional amendment to appear on the November ballot. According to the proposal, “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” It has one exception that is already in the state constitution: Parents must be told before their minor children can get an abortion.

Florida Democrats are hoping that young people will vote to protect abortion rights in order to overcome Republicans’ 900,000 voter registration advantage in the state. They hope that moderate views of the ballot initiative will persuade younger voters to vote Democrat when given the choice between a six-week abortion ban or protecting abortion till viability.

Jayden D’Onofrio, chairman of the Florida Future Leaders political action committee, stated that young Florida voters have a “real opportunity to shape the electoral landscape.” Given that abortion rights have succeeded in national elections, he believes Florida can encourage young voters to register and vote for Democrats.

Nathan Mitchell, president of Florida Atlantic University College Republicans, stated that he would favor a total abortion ban and hopes the amendment does not pass. Mitchell added that most people prefer abortion limits, usually bans between 10 and 15 weeks of gestation.

Since the US Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the majority of Republican-controlled states have passed abortion bans or restrictions. A survey of abortion providers undertaken for the Society of Family Planning, which advocates for abortion access, discovered that Florida experienced the second-largest rise in the overall number of abortions performed after the ruling. According to state data, more than 7,700 women from other states had abortions in Florida in 2023.

Florida Democratic officials are urging women to use abortion cash and assistance. On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book encouraged women to use abortion travel money and to avoid “taking matters into your own hands.”

Matt reported from West Palm Beach, Florida.