DeSantis, a Republican leader and potential candidate for the US presidency in 2024, is expected to sign the bill.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a prominent Republican Party figure, is expected to enact a six-week abortion ban, which will make the southern state the latest to enact severe restrictions on the procedure in the United States. .
The state’s Republican-led House of Representatives approved the ban by a 70-40 vote on Thursday, allowing the bill to pass through the governor’s office.
The vote puts Florida among about 13 other states that have enacted similar bans on abortion at six weeks pregnant or earlier.
Florida had previously banned abortion for 15 weeks. Critics argue that most patients don’t realize they’re pregnant so soon after conception, making the latest bill a near-total ban.
In the wake of its passage, Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration issued a statement opposing what it called an “extreme and dangerous new ban on abortion.”
“The ban goes against fundamental freedoms and is out of step with the opinion of the vast majority of the population of Florida and of all of the United States,” wrote Karine Jean-Pierre, press secretary for the White House, in a statement.
She added that Thursday’s ban would not only affect Florida’s 4 million women of childbearing age, but also patients in neighboring states, where similar bans are in effect.
Many of them, Jean-Pierre explained, “have already relied on traveling to Florida as an option to access care.”
Florida has one of the highest abortion rates in the United States. The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Health Policy Research found that in 2020, about 74,868 legal abortions were performed in Florida, the most of any state.
The next highest totals were in New York and Texas. Florida has the third highest state population in the United States, recently overtaking New York.
Vice President Kamala Harris echoed Jean-Pierre’s remarks on Twitter, writing, “Let’s be clear: This law would deny women across Florida access to basic health care.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last June — effectively ending the constitutional right to abortion — has left every state questioning its legality.
The six-week abortion ban was passed by the Florida Senate on April 3 by a margin of 26 to 13. The bill includes exceptions for rape, incest and endangering the lives of parents.
But those exceptions don’t go far enough, according to Kara Gross, legislative director of the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“The bill’s exceptions are so onerous and impractical that they make next to no sense,” she said in a statement released Thursday. “In a state that prides itself on being free, this is an unprecedented and unacceptable level of government overreach and intrusion.”
Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani also denounced the bill, saying it was “the most extreme abortion ban in Florida history.”
“This is an incredibly sad and painful day for our state, but we will not stop or be discouraged in the fight for reproductive justice and personal freedom,” she wrote on Twitter.
But many in the state’s Republican majority cheered the bill.
“There is no greater goal that drives me than giving every child a chance to be born and a chance to live,” Republican State Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka said in a video supporting the ban on abortion.
Seven Republican state representatives, however, broke ranks to vote against the bill.
Polls generally indicate that a majority of Americans support some degree of abortion access. In 2022, the Pew Research Center found that 61% of Americans believe abortion should be accessible in most or all cases.
While abortion approval tends to follow party lines – with Democrats backing access and Republicans favoring greater restrictions – a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday painted a more nuanced picture.
The poll found that 43% of self-identified Republicans indicated they were less likely to vote for someone who supported limiting access to abortion.
Additionally, 51% of Republicans polled agreed that a recent decision by a Texas judge to limit access to the abortion pill was “politically motivated.”
DeSantis, who has established himself as one of America’s leading Republicans, is seen as a likely candidate for the 2024 presidential race.
He had previously shown support for a six-week abortion ban in his state and advocated that his policy in Florida be a model for the rest of the nation.
The Florida Supreme Court is considering a legal challenge against the previous 15-week ban on the grounds that it violates the right to privacy in the state constitution.