DeSantis: Ballot initiative allows abortion up to birth, thwarts parental consent

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke with faith leaders on Thursday about Florida’s abortion ballot Amendment 4 and how it could make the state an abortion “mecca.”

“Because all of the Southeast has various forms of pro-life legislation, Florida would become the abortion mecca of this region, and maybe one of the abortion meccas of the entire world because it would be one of the most liberal abortion regimes,” DeSantis said.

“I think this really requires everybody of faith to want to be involved in defeating what they put on this ballot,” he added.

The amendment, sponsored by Floridians Protecting Freedom, would enshrine abortion into the state’s constitution. It would allow for the practice to be done up until the point of “viability,” which the governor mentioned is a non-definable time in the pregnancy that can easily be abused by abortion providers.

“This amendment is written maybe more liberal than New York and California, but you would basically have a cottage industry where people would be coming into Florida for this purpose,” the governor said.

DeSantis explained how the sponsor wrote the ballot summary in a way that tries to “attract as many votes as possible.”

“So they do poll testing, they use phrases, and in particular, they want to get people to vote for their amendment who probably substantively disagree with it,” he said.

Attorney General Ashley Moody challenged the vagueness of the amendment and the Florida Supreme Court ultimately upheld the legitimacy of the measure, granting it ballot access for 2024.

The governor added how the measure needs 60% of the voters to support it in order to pass. He explained that many of the similar abortion ballot amendments in other states passed with more than 50% of the voters approval, but not 60%.

“We’re looking at that, understanding that 60% is a higher threshold, but also understanding that there’s a mount of wind at the backs when you have every media [outlet] supporting Amendment 4 passage, there’s gonna be a lot of money that gets poured in to be able to support Amendment 4’s passage, so we’re in a situation where we’ve gotta fight back against that,” he said.

“One of the things that we have found is that when this is properly understood, it struggles to get 60%,” he continued. “However, the way they wrote the summary, there are people that are pro-life that poll in favor of this because they think it’s a pro-life amendment.”

The governor described how the amendment simply requires a “medical provider” to determine a woman should get an abortion, and she’ll be justified to do it at any point in the pregnancy.

“You could have somebody who is a chiropractor, could say ‘yeah, they need to go’ and then you could go right there,” he said.

DeSantis expressed that it won’t matter how many pro-life elected officials hold power in the state because they won’t be able to do anything about the abortion issue after the amendment becomes enshrined.

He said the sponsor and supporters of the amendment know that if the wording of the measure is toxic with Republicans, “they will lose.”

“We actually had found people that think viability means the heartbeat bill, that you could vote for this amendment and keep the heartbeat protection act, and that is just not true,” the governor said.

He advised the faith leaders to utilize their influence and “let people know what’s at stake.”

“It’s obviously about creating a culture of life or walking away from a culture of life. It’s also about upholding parental rights or diminishing and eliminating key parental rights,” he said.

The governor pointed out how the measure would allow for a minor to get an abortion without parental consent.

“This amendment would eliminate that and abortion would be the one thing that a minor could go behind their parents back and do without consent,” he said.

“They’re writing this stuff to try and trick people into voting for something that they may not ultimately agree with once it’s put into practice,” DeSantis added. “And the fact that people could read that ballot summary, you have 10 people do it and you probably get 10 different views on what it actually means. That’s not the way to do business when you talk about amending the constitution of a state.”

He argued that many of the races across the state aren’t going to be very competitive because of strong Republican influence in the state, so fighting against the abortion ballot amendment, as well as the amendment legalizing marijuana for recreational use, should be a top priority.