The state legislature and Governor Rick Scott have mounted a full-scale, nonstop attack on women’s health in Florida. During the 2011 session, politicians filed 18 anti-choice bills limiting women’s access to the full range of reproductive health services, spent more than two months of the legislative session debating abortion restrictions, and passed four bills into law.
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Florida politicians have made debating women’s health a sport. Instead of focusing on jobs and the economy, lawmakers wasted 59 days debating abortion restrictions. And when lawmakers debated an egregious mandatory ultrasound bill (now a law), they ironically censored officials from using the term “uterus” on the legislature floor. As a pro-women’s health advocate noted, how do you ban the word “uterus” at the same time you’re debating a bill that would force women to look at a picture of their uterus?
It’s no surprise that Governor Rick Scott hosted a party at the governor’s mansion when he signed four abortion restrictions, calling it a way for anti-choice activists to “celebrate the accomplishments.”
And, over the course of the fall, they’ve continued this attack by filing bill after bill in preparation for the session starting in January 2012, including proposed regulations that would make it nearly impossible to open and operate health centers that provide comprehensive reproductive health care such as lifesaving cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, and abortion care.
Like the laws passed in 2011, this bill does nothing to reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion. Instead, it puts women’s health at risk and reduces access to safe and legal health care services.
Normally, ballot initiatives could appear on the ballot after a certain amount of petitions are collected in favor of a particular initiative. However, the Florida Legislature bypassed Floridians by voting to put an anti-women’s health bill on the ballot in the 2012 election. Currently, the Florida Constitution contains stronger privacy rights than the United States Constitution. But Florida’s 2012 ballot initiative would amend the state constitution to deny women fundamental privacy rights, denying them the privacy rights they currently have and should continue to have.
If that weren’t enough, Florida is also likely to face a so-called “personhood” amendment in 2012. Petitions are being circulated throughout the state that would elevate the legal status of a fertilized egg to that of a living person, and effectively ban abortion, common birth control methods, and in vitro fertilization.
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These attempts to restrict women’s access to reproductive health care are not new to Florida. The 2010 midterm elections worsened the political environment for women by creating a Republican supermajority in the Florida Legislature.
Days spent focusing on anti-women’s health legislation rather than focusing on improving jobs and the economy
State tax dollars directed to crisis pregnancy centers that provide no health services to women
Florida has the 12th-highest rate of teen pregnancy in the country
Dollars spent on costs related to unintended pregnancy
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