The future of abortion access is now in the hands of the Florida Supreme Court
The Florida Supreme Court is preparing to decide the fate of the state’s new abortion law.
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Justices heard arguments Friday morning in the legal challenge from Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood is seeking to throw out the law, claiming it violates Florida’s constitution.
If the court sides with the state and upholds the 15-week ban, the decision will trigger the six-week abortion ban to go into effect.
The court is considering the argument that a 1980 clause in the Florida Constitution regarding the right to privacy should also protect abortion.
Read: Florida hits Orlando abortion clinic with $193K fine
Planned Parenthood along with the other abortion providers involved in the case argue a privacy clause added to the state constitution in 1980 shields an individual’s private life from “government intrusion.”
In the past, the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that that includes abortion.
But the state claims the privacy clause only protects a person’s information from being accessed by the government.
On Friday, justices asked questions of both sides, including what did voters understand as “private life,” and did that include abortion? Or did voters in 1980 believe the state’s actions didn’t have any impact to abortion access?
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Some justices and Planned Parenthood noted that Roe v. Wade, the federal landmark decision that protected the right to abortion, was decided seven years before Floridians voted on this privacy clause.
Planned Parenthood argued that lawmakers and voters understood the decision was the law of the land then and that the state couldn’t take any action against it.
“It seems like the record, at most, shows that in a legal sense, privacy may have included abortion, but it doesn’t seem like the people of Florida had an actual debate over that when it was adopted,” Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz said.
Many comments and questions from the justices signaled a possible decision in favor of the state.
Read: Floridians could decide abortion protections in 2024 ballot referendum
Muñiz, who was appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, seemed skeptical of the sweeping nature of the 1973 landmark abortion ruling.
“Roe v. Wade may have been an abomination,” he said. “It may have been semantically absurd to talk about that in terms of privacy, but for better or worse it was part of our cultural lexicon.”
The Florida Supreme Court, which has several new justices on it, could hand down a decision in several days or weeks.
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