Two years after Dobbs, Floridians must work to restore women’s reproductive rights| Opinion

Extremists want to strip our freedoms away and control women’s bodies. They want to get between you and your doctor on abortion decisions and insert themselves into our intimate family conversations on starting or growing a family.

How did we get here? Monday marks two years since Donald Trump’s Supreme Court majority ripped away women’s reproductive rights with the Dobbs decision.

Since Trump “proudly” overturned Roe v. Wade, more than one in three women now live under cruel abortion bans nationwide, including here in Florida.

And thanks to Trump, doctors can face jail for providing necessary reproductive care. Many are fleeing states with restrictions, making provider shortages worse.

As unimaginable as all this may seem, the chaos, cruelty, and confusion that the Dobbs decision unleashed could actually get worse.

Trump and MAGA allies like Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott favor an even more extreme and dangerous anti-freedom agenda.

To protect our reproductive freedoms, the choice is clear. While President Joe Biden fights to protect and expand reproductive access since Dobbs, Trump refuses to rule out a nationwide abortion ban.

When given the chance, nearly every Republican U.S. Senator – including Florida Sens. Scott and Marco Rubio – refused to vote to protect access to contraception and family building services, like In Vitro Fertilization, IVF.

These are deeply personal issues. I struggled with infertility when my husband and I had trouble conceiving when I was just 29 years old. Through IVF, I was able to conceive our twins, both now healthy young adults and a third child, naturally.

As a breast cancer survivor, I am particularly concerned with how a cancer diagnosis and the grueling, necessary treatments affect a survivor’s ability to conceive a baby.

For many survivors like me, with a BRCA gene mutation or other forms of cancer, IVF can be a godsend to end a genetic cycle of generational increased cancer risks.

I want my children and other families to have IVF as an option to end that risk. Yet because the Trump-led Dobbs legal landscape now rules women’s personal lives, all reproductive access decisions are clouded with uncertainty.

Abortion and birth control are sensitive medical decisions, ones that patients and doctors must be free to make for themselves – without government interference.

But there are many ways we can take back or protect our stolen and threatened freedoms. One is to pass Amendment 4 in Florida.

Passing it would undo Florida’s near-total abortion ban, which allows the government to interfere in decisions before many women even realize they are pregnant, and doesn’t have real exceptions.

After that, we need to vote a pro-choice ballot, top to bottom. Sen. Scott, a staunch Trump ally, said he would have signed Florida’s abortion ban, and will vote against Amendment 4.

Yet his Nov. 5th opponent, Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, fiercely defends reproductive rights. Sending Scott home and Mucarsel-Powell to Washington will protect our freedoms.

And while a majority of Florida’s Supreme Court voted to put Amendment 4 on the ballot, three justices refused to let voters have that say.

Two of them, Justices Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso, both tried to block your vote on this issue, and both are up for retention Nov. 5th .

Neither deserves to keep their seat. Vote no on their retention. Also, share your own stories with friends in letters to the editor or social media.

Make sure co-workers and family are registered to vote, and that they have requested a vote by mail ballot.

Most importantly, returning President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to the White House will help ensure that our daughters and granddaughters have the same rights we had growing up.

By taking these actions, you can remove MAGA extremists from our private medical decisions and block judges and politicians from interfering with abortion access. Together, we can protect and restore our freedoms.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat, represents Florida’s 25th congressional district.