This Campaign is
Fueled by Rocket Lobby
** Enter your address above, then press enter or click the magnifying glass/search icon on the right. This will take you to a page where you can contact legislators.
Please read below for talking points to use when you contact legislators. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE. Please use your own words.**
Politicians need to get out of the way and stop attacking people who can get pregnant.
Private, personal medical decisions need to be made by families and individuals using their own power and freedom – not politicians.
Abortion shouldn’t be politicized. However we feel about abortion at different points in a pregnancy, a person’s health should drive important medical decisions – not political agendas.
Politicians should make sure abortion is safe, legal, and accessible and then stay out of it all together.
This bill also provides no exceptions for when a person is raped, even if they are a minor, and only very limited exceptions for when the pregnant person learns that there are serious fetal anomalies. In these situations, it is crucial for a pregnant person to have the opportunity to think through their options based on their unique situation in consultation with people they trust, including their physicians, loved ones, counselors, religious leaders and others – but not politicians.
This bill would impose a completely arbitrary ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Despite efforts to distract from this ban, the ultimate goal of this bill and its proponents is clear: it would severely restrict access to abortion in Florida and undermine Floridians’ long-established fundamental rights to bodily autonomy.
This bill would ban abortion after 15 weeks and prohibit many people from accessing abortion care in the state. Abortion is a critical component of reproductive health care and a safe procedure with a low risk of complications—there is no justification whatsoever for this ban.
This bill is part of a larger effort supported by national anti-abortion groups to end abortion access throughout Florida and, if it becomes law, it would strip Floridians of their rights and take our state backwards.
In addition to this 15-week ban, this bill puts forward three policy proposals that are shallow attempts to conceal the fact that the proponents of this bill want to ban abortion despite the fact that we know restrictions on abortion access hurt women, their families, and their communities.
Don’t be fooled—this bill will do nothing to help Floridians and will, in fact, impose significant harms on pregnant people and their families. There is no room in our state for this kind of restrictive and damaging policy.
The three “positive policies” included alongside this 15-week ban are disingenuous, and could easily be introduced on their own, as standalone legislation. The only reason to include them in legislation attacking abortion is to provide cover for the fact that the people behind this bill want to strip Floridians of their constitutional rights.
This is an underhanded attempt to play politics with people’s lives.
The people of our state need and deserve a robust slate of policies that actually serve children and families—and we should never be asked to trade our fundamental rights for such baseline offers of care.
These provisions are merely pretext, and you shouldn’t let them confuse you. This bill will ban abortion at 15 weeks, and that will be devastating for the people of this state.
We know that when abortion is not an option, women and children suffer. States with more abortion restrictions tend to have poorer health outcomes for women and children than other states, including higher rates of maternal and infant mortality.
Including a proposal for fetal and infant mortality review committees will not offset the harm that this abortion ban will cause.
If the sponsors of this bill really care about protecting against infant and fetal mortality, they can propose a stand-alone bill to establish these committees, and they will adequately fund those committees.
Organizations in the South, led primarily by Black women, have been calling on state leaders to implement maternal and fetal mortality review boards for years. Those calls have gone unanswered for years–until now, when the proponents of this bill want to cynically use this policy effort to shroud their dangerous goals.
Banning abortion is counterproductive to protecting the health of women and children. Indeed, major medical organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have affirmed that “reproductive healthcare is essential to a woman’s overall health, and access to abortion is an important component of reproductive healthcare.”
This Campaign is
Fueled by Rocket Lobby