ORLANDO, Fla. – Supporters of an amendment to enshrine abortion access in the Florida Constitution celebrated Friday as the state reported the campaign got enough valid petition signatures to be on the November ballot.
Floridians Protecting Freedom, the campaign to get the amendment before voters on the November ballot, started last April and needed to get nearly 900,000 valid petition signatures by Feb. 1.
The Florida Division of Elections on Friday confirmed the campaign got 911,122 valid signatures — more than enough to be on the ballot. FPF campaign director Lauren Brenzel said 250,000 of those came from volunteers.
“The fact that we only launched our campaign eight months ago and we’ve already reached our petition goal speaks to the unprecedented support and momentum there is to get politicians out of our private lives and health care decisions,” Brenzel said. “Most initiative campaigns never make it this far. The ones that do usually spend far more or take much longer to qualify.”
The amendment would prohibit the state government from making laws that restrict abortion before viability or when a health care provider determines an abortion is necessary to protect a patient’s health.
The amendment campaign began in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to throw out Roe v. Wade in 2022, as well as efforts by the state’s Republican leadership to severely restrict abortions — first banning most abortions after 15 weeks in 2022, and then banning abortions after 6 weeks in 2023.
The bans are currently on hold while the Florida Supreme Court decides whether the 15-week abortion ban goes against the Florida Constitution. If the court sides with the state, that 6-week abortion ban would go into effect within 30 days of the ruling.
The Florida Supreme Court also has to decide whether the amendment can go on the ballot. Oral arguments on that issue are set for Feb. 7 in Tallahassee.
Attorney General Ashley Moody is trying to keep the amendment off the ballot. In briefs to the court, Moody said the use of “viability” as a measure would confuse voters, calling the ballot summary part of the “overall design to lay ticking time bombs that will enable abortion proponents later to argue that the amendment has a much broader meaning than voters would ever have thought.”
But Floridians Protecting Freedom argue the term viability in the context of abortion has long been understood to mean the moment when a fetus can live outside the wound, including in definitions by the state legislature for its abortion bills.
FPF attorneys called Moody’s argument “disingenuous.”
The Supreme Court is not supposed to consider the merits of proposed constitutional amendments but weigh issues such as whether they would be clear to voters. Justices look at ballot titles and summaries, the parts of proposed amendments that voters see when they go to the polls.
Should the amendment get on the ballot, 60% of Florida voters would have to approve the measure for it to pass.
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