Republican bill would ban nearly all abortions in Florida

Cindy Krischer Goodman, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Updated ·4 min read
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On the eve of the opening of the Florida legislative session, a Republican lawmaker filed a bill that essentially bans all abortions in Florida.

Miami-Dade County Rep. David Borrero’s proposed bill (HB 1519), filed Monday, states that “a person or an entity may not purposely perform or attempt to perform an abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency.” The proposed bill says “a person exists from the moment of fertilization.”

Borrero, of Sweetwater, wants the law to go into effect instead of the six-week ban approved in 2023. That law is pending the outcome of a Florida Supreme Court decision over whether the right to privacy enshrined in State Constitution includes a right to abortion.

His proposal includes penalties for physicians who perform abortions. It says “performing or attempting to perform an abortion” would be a third-degree felony, subject to as much as 10 years in prison or with a fine of up to $100,000, “or both.” The mothers would not be charged with a crime for obtaining an abortion.

The proposed bill to virtually ban all abortions defines the exception for a medical emergency as “an emergent physical condition in which an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” The proposal also states that a physician may perform an abortion on a minor only to save the life of the pregnant minor in a medical emergency.

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At this time, Florida bans most abortions after 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest as the result of a law passed in the 2022 legislative session. Women from nearby states with more restrictive bans travel to Florida for abortion access.

“This latest attempted to control women’s bodies and take away our rights is a desperate attempt at relevancy by the bill sponsor,” said Sen. Lauren Book, a Democrat from Broward County. “We are in arm’s reach of getting abortion on the ballot and restoring the rights they stole. Republican leadership knows this is no longer a winning issue for their party. Voters of all political leanings have shown and will continue to show their overwhelming support for women’s right to healthcare privacy and reproductive freedom.”

In his state of the state address Tuesday at the start of the 2024 legislative session, Gov. Ron DeSantis did not address whether he would support a total ban and, in fact, did not use the word “abortion” at all in his speech. Near the end of the address, he said Florida “protected the sanctity of life” as part of a long list of what he called accomplishments in 2023. In April 2023, he signed the Heartbeat Protection Act, which prohibits abortions once the unborn child has a detectible heartbeat.

Borrero’s newly proposed virtually full ban of abortion comes at the same time an initiative has advanced to put abortion access on the Florida ballot in 2024.

Floridians Protecting Freedom announced Friday that it reached a major milestone and now has 910,946 verified signatures to allow Florida voters to decide if they want to assure access to abortion through a constitutional amendment. The group needed 891,523 to get the initiative on the ballot.

The campaign said the signatures that were collected represent more than 8% of voters in 17 congressional districts, meaning it surpassed the required threshold to allow Florida voters to decide on a constitutional amendment that would protect abortion access prior to viability. The campaign still needs to have its ballot language approved by the Florida Supreme Court. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has asked the court in briefs to reject the initiative because the use of the term “viability” is ambiguous. A hearing is set for February.

If the Supreme Court approves the wording and the amendment makes the ballot, it must win at least 60% of the vote to be approved. The proposed constitutional amendment has come amid the backdrop of ballot fights in other states after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion-rights decision. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling left abortion decisions to states.

Nineteen months after the Supreme Court decision, 14 states now ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

“The fact that we only launched our campaign eight months ago and we’ve already reached our petition goal speaks to the unprecedented support and momentum there is to get politicians out of our private lives and health care decisions,” Floridians Protecting Freedom campaign director Lauren Brenzel said in a statement on Friday.