The gravesite of Amber Thurman, at Rose Garden Cemetary in McDonough, Georgia, on Aug. 13, 2024. (Photo by Nydia Blas/ProPublica)
Ladies! Want to control that body? Think you should be able to choose whether to have that baby or not?
Prefer not to die because you can’t get the right medical care?
Unless citizens vote to change the Florida Constitution to enshrine reproductive rights, you must avoid this state as if it were an abusive ex.
Florida is a danger to women.
Amendment 4 would allow abortion up to viability. The existing limit is six weeks.
Unless you’re lucky or a test-taking obsessive, you won’t know you’re pregnant at six weeks.
That is, of course, Ron DeSantis’ plan: Whether you want a baby or not, whether the baby might impair your health for the rest of your life.
It looks like the ballot measure is popular: A poll taken earlier this month shows at least 55% plan to vote yes with 26% saying no.
However, Amendment 4 will need 60% to pass.
Both supporters and opponents of reproductive rights are working hard to gain votes from the 29% who say they aren’t sure.
But only one side is cheating — and using taxpayer dollars to do it.
Mendacity
The state has stuck a mendacious “financial impact statement” on the ballot next to the amendment, asserting that because it might “result in significantly more abortions and fewer live births,” Florida’s population wouldn’t grow as fast, which means less revenue.
Plus, we are told, it’s “probable that there will be litigation challenging the constitutionality of Florida’s [abortion] funding restrictions” which, should they be found unconstitutional, would cost the state legal fees and force it to “subsidize abortions.”
In other words, ladies, if you selfishly insist on making your own medical and moral decisions about your body, you might cost the state money it could use to waste filing silly lawsuits and flying asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard.
In addition, the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration now has on its website a slew of hysterical misinformation: “Current Florida Law Protects Women, Amendment 4 Threatens Women’s Safety;” it will “expose women and children to health risks;” and “the Florida Legislature will lose the ability to protect basic, common-sense health care regulations.”
If this fails to sufficiently terrorize voters, there are TV ad attacks on Amendment 4, sponsored by AHCA and the Florida Association of Broadcasters, declaring Florida’s abortion laws are just fine; indeed, they’re terrific, and women should be dancing in the streets to show how grateful they are to have such a compassionate, sensible government.
The state apparently got a 75% discount on what they’re ludicrously describing as a “public service announcement.”
This is certainly a misuse of public funds and probably illegal to boot.
But since when does Ron DeSantis care about that?
Banging on people’s doors
Not content with false advertising and fear-mongering, DeSantis and his misogynist brain trust are claiming thousands of Amendment 4 petition signatures are fraudulent, even though elections supervisors have already verified the vast majority of them.
There were some fakes; they’ve been invalidated.
This is how the system is supposed to work.
Yet the state claims around 36,000 signatures should be “reviewed.”
Advocates needed 891,523: they gathered more than 993,000.
Do the math, y’all: Even if all 36,000 are fake (and they almost certainly are not), there were still enough signatures to put reproductive rights on the ballot.
That hasn’t stopped DeSantis sending the state Stasi, also known as the Office of Election Crimes and Security, to bang on people’s doors with folders full of personal information about them, demanding to know if they really signed the petition and if they’re really who they say they are.
This is naked voter intimidation.
Death
DeSantis and his goons don’t care, any more than they care about Anya Cook, a Florida woman who nearly died when doctors in Coral Springs refused to give her the care she needed, lest they be accused of performing an abortion.
Her water broke prematurely, so she went to the emergency room, where they told her it was “pre-viability pre-term pre-labor rupture of the membranes,” gave her antibiotics, and told her to go home.
The next day, she miscarried in a bathroom and started hemorrhaging, eventually losing about half her blood. She could have died.
Amber Nicole Thurman did die.
She was about eight weeks pregnant with twins and knew she couldn’t take care of them. She took abortion pills, but they failed to expel all the fetal tissue from her body, causing her to become so severely infected her blood pressure hit the floor and her organs began to fail.
Doctors at Piedmont Henry Hospital in Atlanta did not perform the medically appropriate procedure, a D&C (dilation and curettage) — which might have saved her life — until it was too late.
This happened in Georgia, but it could easily have happened in Florida. It could have been Anya Cook, or your daughter or your sister or your spouse or you.
Terrified doctors
The problem is the same: Doctors terrified of going to jail for doing their jobs, even though the laws in both Georgia and Florida supposedly allow for “saving the life of the mother.”
The standard is vague, not scientifically defined, and thus deadly.
Republicans don’t care.
Ladies, they want to drag us back to the America of J.D. Vance’s fever dreams in which a woman’s highest purpose is not having a career of your own (selfish!) but birthing babies and staying home all day: Day care is “class war against normal people.”
The America that might kill you.