ORLANDO, Fla. – An effort to put an amendment on the Florida 2024 ballot to protect abortion hit an important milestone this week, supporters said.
Organizers with Floridians Protecting Freedom believe they have collected over 225,000 petitions, enough to trigger a judicial and financial impact review by the state.
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“We have been really overwhelmed by the response from Floridians to this effort,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom. “We were thinking that we would have half this number of petitions by this point.”
The proposed constitutional amendment would allow for an abortion up to viability, usually between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy, or when needed to protect the mother’s health, as determined by a health care provider.
Currently, abortions are allowed up to 15 weeks of pregnancy in Florida. However, Florida’s Republican majority pushed a bill this year to further restrict abortions to 6 weeks of pregnancy unless the life of the mother is in danger, effectively end most abortion services in the state.
While Gov. Ron DeSantis supported the 6-week ban, he signed it into law in April without much fanfare compared to the big ceremony he held in Kissimmee for the 15-week ban the year before.
That six-week ban is on hold, though, pending a Florida Supreme Court ruling on whether the 15-week ban violates the state’s constitutional right to privacy, put in place in 1989. If the court rules in favor of the state, the more restrictive 6-week ban would go into effect a month later.
Meanwhile, the court has allowed the state to enforce the 15-week ban while its fate is decided.
It’s that right to privacy that FPF wants to make clear with its abortion amendment.
“For us, the predominant message really is that politicians do not belong in these personal and private medical decisions,” Brenzel said, “And that doctors are the experts and patients are the experts about the care that they need for themselves and the decisions that they want to make for themselves and their families.”
It’s not the only abortion-related amendment trying to get on the ballot.
A group called Protect Human Life Florida is pushing a constitutional amendment for the 2024 ballot that would recognize the right to life of “preborn individuals,” defined as a preborn human person at any stage of development.
That amendment has 13,814 valid petition signatures, according to the latest count by the state Division of Elections.
We reached out to Protect Human Life Florida to speak to them about their efforts and have yet to hear back.
Getting on the ballot
The coalition of groups helping to collect petitions, which include groups like ACLU of Florida, Planned Parenthood and the League of Women Voters of Florida, started their efforts in May, and they are racing against the clock.
To get on the ballot, the amendment needs nearly 900,000 verified petition signatures by Feb. 1 of next year, with a portion of them collected in half of the state’s 28 congressional districts.
Then it needs approval from the Florida Supreme Court to get on the ballot.
Once on the ballot, the measure needs 60% approval from voters to pass.
Ginger Mundy, with the League of Women Voters, says while the league is nonpartisan, it will get involved in issues it feels the voters should have a more direct say in.
“We feel that the government, the state government of Florida has overreached into our private lives,” Mundy said. “And they’ve also overreached by pre-empting local governments, which is also something that the league, you know, opposes. So we feel that this ballot initiative is an opportunity to correct that and let the voters of Florida decide whether or not abortion should be legal.”
Mundy and Brenzel said votes in the Florida House and Senate during the last legislative session show there is Republican support for the amendment.
Two Republicans in the Florida Senate and eight Republicans in the Florida House voted against SB 300, the six-week abortion ban.
“Anti-abortion politicians in the state went too hard and too fast in a way that Floridians as a whole are not supportive of,” Brenzel said.
Several polls indicate Floridians are not in step with the majority of Florida’s Republican lawmakers.
A University of North Florida poll published last March shows 62% of Floridians polled strongly oppose a 6-week abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest (the ban that was passed has those exceptions).
A University of South Florida Florida Policy Survey conducted in July of last year showed 57% of Floridians disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year, though only 33% said the state should pass a law to protect abortion access.
A Florida Atlantic University poll taken in May 2022 showed Floridians nearly 67% believed abortion should be legal in most or all cases.
It’s that U.S. Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that is energizing people in Florida and around the country to fight for abortion rights, according to both Brenzel and Mundy.
In 2022, voters supported abortion rights in six states. Voters approved abortion rights amendments in California, Michigan and Vermont, and beat back efforts to limit abortions in Kansas, Kentucky and Montana.
Brenzel said the first Zoom meeting to train volunteers on getting petition signatures had nearly 1,000 people. Of the 225,000 petitions collected, Brenzel said 60,000 were collected by volunteers and 15,000 were sent in by Floridians on their own. Paid petition collectors acquired the rest.
Mundy said the initiative has also pushed more Floridians to get more involved civically in general, not just on the abortion issue.
“We believe in the power of women to create a more perfect democracy,” Mundy said. “And we believe that protection for reproductive health decisions is a democracy issue -- and that goes back to a woman’s ability to fully participate physically you know, civically in society.”
Groups supporting the amendment will make a push this weekend to collect petitions, marking the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs on Sunday, June 24.
Abortion in Florida
The state reports 33,010 abortions have taken place so far this year, and 82,581 abortions took place in 2022, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.
No abortions were performed in the third trimester of pregnancy. A majority were performed in the first trimester.
According to the AHCA:
- 23,613 cases in 2023 list the reason as “elective abortion.” We’ve asked the AHCA what this term means and are waiting to hear back.
- 7,608 aborted for social or economic reasons.
- 960 aborted because of the emotional or psychological health of the mother.
- 499 were performed because of the physical health of the mother.
- 132 were performed due to a serious fetal genetic defect, deformity or abnormality.
- 106 were performed due to a life-endangering physical condition.
- 50 were performed due to a fatal fetal abnormality.
Should the 6-week abortion ban go into effect, Florida would become the 16th state with an abortion ban of six weeks or less.
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