On Wednesday morning the Florida Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the state constitutional amendment pro-abortion groups are seeking to get on the November ballot.
SBA’s State Policy Director Katie Daniel and Southern Regional Director Caitlin Connors – with special guest baby Vera in tow – were on location:
SBA Pro-Life America submitted an amicus brief outlining the ways the ballot measure violates Florida’s standards:
The justices – three of whom are women – didn’t hesitate to jump in and ask tough, fair questions of both sides.
Chief Justice Carlos G. Muñiz pressed both on whether the Florida Constitution is silent on the rights of unborn children (his words) or if it would be altered by the amendment. Nathan Forrester, arguing for the state of Florida, responded that while the state isn’t taking a position for this case, it wouldn’t be beyond the purview of the court to consider.
The chief justice revisited this issue later, referencing Roe v. Wade itself (“If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses.”) Courtney Brewer, arguing for amendment proponents, declined to even speculate about unborn children’s legal rights.
Justice Renatha Francis asked Brewer to respond directly to SBA’s brief on whether Floridians “would be enshrining ‘in constitutional cement’…abortion without restriction for the entire nine months of pregnancy, and that is not being communicated to the voters.” Francis asked, “Isn’t that part of the job” of the proposed amendment?
Brewer answered that people will have the text with them as they are voting. Chief Justice Muñiz quickly responded, “So this is a wolf that comes [dressed] as a wolf?”
While being questioned by several justices about the amendment language, Brewer dropped a whopper: “There is no question that voters understand what viability means in the abortion context.”
In reality, that’s a very big question. Media outlets have spent years misinforming the public. For example, Politico’s article summarizing oral arguments states that passage of the ballot initiative would roll back the state’s protections for babies “to about 24 weeks, when the fetus is viable outside the womb.”
We’ve written extensively about the abortion industry’s view that viability could be at any time, or never. Just this week, we highlighted it again, as Democrats in Congress tried to force yet another vote on their Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act.
It’s hardly an academic point. Right now, there’s a three-year-old Alabama boy named Curtis, born at 21 weeks and a day, whose story was cited by Fortune as an example of how “medical science has slowly shifted that boundary [of viability] downward.” Voters aren’t necessarily being told that “30% of babies born at 22 weeks, 56% born at 23 weeks and 71% born at 24 weeks lived at least until they were healthy enough to be sent home…if doctors tried to save them,” according to a 2022 study of nearly 11,000 premature babies.
Indeed, viability-based limits have been a point of division among pro-abortion groups in states like Missouri: “Missouri Abortion Fund…has publicly denounced any initiative petition that includes language referencing fetal viability.” Colleen McNicholas further inveighed against “the idea that we would limit [abortion] at an arbitrary gestational age” – stating bluntly, when asked if allowing abortion up to 12 weeks (the first trimester) was better than nothing, “No, it is not.” The language that activists officially began collecting signatures for this week contains the undefined term health.
When Justice Meredith Sasso asked Brewer whether reasonable voters might think the legislature could still limit late-term abortion, with a health exception, the truth finally came out clearly: “It would be inconsistent with the language of the amendment.”
Florida is far from the only state fighting deceptive ballot measures:
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced this week that inspectors arrested a “paid petition circulator” and issued an arrest warrant for a second petition circulator after they submitted 133 invalid constitutional amendment petitions in numerous counties.
By early April the Court will either reject the amendment as written or allow it on the ballot. Regardless of the outcome, we’ll be hard at work educating Floridians about the enormous harm it would cause.
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