Amendment 4 forgets the health and safety of Florida women and girls in one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida’s voters will have several big decisions to make come November.

One, of course, will be deciding between the two very different visions of America’s future in the presidential race. Another will be voting yes or no on Florida Amendment 4. 

This state constitutional amendment would effectively legalize abortion through birth.

The amendment achieves this extreme position through its broad language, which leaves the terms “viability,” “patient’s health” and “healthcare provider” undefined and wide open to interpretation. Abortion activists are nothing if not strategic, and the words that they choose have specific and intended legal consequences.

They have led to courts striking down protections for the unborn in state after state. In the event that Amendment 4 passes in Florida, the state will be in the unenviable company of China, where no unborn child of any age is protected from elective termination. 

But unborn children would not be the only victims of Amendment 4’s deliberately undefined language. The resulting unregulated abortion regime would pose grave risks for pregnant women and girls across the state. 

Again, this particular devil is in the details of the words “penalize, delay, or restrict.” Consider that any common-sense maternal safety regulation around the abortion procedure would necessarily cause some type of delay or penalize providers that were unwilling or unable to comply with the regulation. 

This is not mere speculation. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Whole Women’s Health vs Heller decision clearly illustrates the problem. Texas had required abortion centers to have facilities comparable to ambulatory surgical centers, and for their physicians to have admitting privileges.

In this 2016 case, however, the high court, relying on Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, deemed these state regulations unconstitutional because they placed an “undue burden” on abortion access.

Amendment 4 would pose similar problems for the regulation of abortion facilities in Florida. Ensuring that an abortion facility in which complicated late term surgical abortions are performed be regulated as extensively as a colonoscopy center would be outlawed.

It would also be impossible to require that their abortionists have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Yet such common-sense facility regulations are crucial for the protection of patients.  

Wide and clear hallways that can accommodate a stretcher in an emergency, ramps leading up to clearly marked exits, ample room-size for operating suites and recovery areas—all of these enhance maternal safety. In addition, hospital privileges work to weed out unscrupulous practitioners who tend to drift toward abortion work because of its low prestige in the medical profession.

One study showed that nearly half of all abortionists had at least one public complaint, disciplinary action, criminal charge, or malpractice suit. Hospital privileges also facilitate the quick transfer of a dangerously deteriorating patient to a hospital emergency room with continuity of care. 

A recent episode in Florida shows just how dangerous abortion facilities, especially those performing late term abortions, can be.

In 2022, Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration shut down the American Family Planning clinic in Pensacola. A doctor who performed late-term surgical terminations at the small clinic severely injured three women in his care, lacerating their cervices, rupturing their uteri and, in one case, damaging a patient’s colon, leading to a partial resection.

The patients survived, but barely. In 2009, an 18-year-old woman at a Miami clinic gave birth to a living baby during a badly botched late-term abortion.

The doctor wasn’t even on the premises when the 22-week-old baby girl was born. What’s more, instead of transporting the baby to the hospital, the clinic owner put the baby in a plastic bag and tossed her into the trash. Her decomposing remains were recovered after an anonymous tip sparked a search. 

These are but two local examples. The reality is that the abortion industry is just that: an industry.

One in which vulnerable pregnant women and girls put their health and lives into the hands of practitioners and “providers” that ought to be properly regulated and held to account by the health authorities of each state.

Amendment 4 would make this oversight virtually impossible. Forget requiring hospital privileges that weed out dangerous physicians.

Forget requiring that only qualified physicians perform abortions. Forget requiring that doorways be wide enough to admit a wheeled stretcher carrying a hemorrhaging woman on her way to the ambulance. 

Forget, pretty much, the health and safety of Florida women and girls in one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. 

Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D., is a Senior Fellow for The Catholic Association and host of the nationally syndicated radio show Conversations with Consequences.