Tag: 6week

DeSantis skipped talking about his 6-week abortion ban to an anti-abortion audience

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Abortion was given only a passing reference, underscoring how uncomfortable the topic makes leading Republicans, even as Republican-dominated legislatures aggressively pursue more restrictive laws. The night before, DeSantis marked the bill signing with an 11 p.m. tweet, not a press event that often accompanies a signature policy achievement.
During DeSantis’ 20-minute speech at the evangelical university he only had this to say about abortion: “We have elevated the importance of family and promoted the culture of life.”
The politics surrounding abortion have become a major issue recently after a federal judge in Texas suspended the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. A federal appeals court ruled this week that it can remain on the market but with availability restricted.
As a further sign of the difficult spot Republicans are in, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who announced a presidential exploratory committee on Wednesday, avoided questions on whether he’d support a federal abortion ban but later clarified that he’d support some sort of federal restriction and would sign a 20-week abortion ban if he were president.
Polling shows that many Americans don’t support strict abortion bans, including 62 percent who oppose outlawing abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected — usually around six weeks of pregnancy.
Florida’s GOP-controlled Legislature on Thursday passed a six-week ban on abortion that provides exceptions for victims of rape and incest up to 15 weeks if they can show some proof such as a police report. But almost 10 Florida Republican lawmakers rejected the ban, many of them representing Democratic areas like Miami or Tallahassee.
DeSantis’ signing of the bill late Thursday night also marked a stark difference from 2022, when he also approved Florida’s 15-week ban on abortion. DeSantis approved the 2022 law during a public event at a church with dozens of people and a large video screen showing the message “Florida is Pro Life.”
On Friday at Liberty University during DeSantis’ event, the most explicit mention of Florida’s six-week ban came from campus pastor Jonathan Falwell, who praised the governor while introducing him to the audience.

“Last night, after the legislature there in Florida passed the bill, [DeSantis] signed the heartbeat Protection Act,” Falwell said to cheers. “And as he signed that into the law at a state of Florida, it will protect all unborn babies because he recognizes that life is a gift.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 14, 2023
Pence commends DeSantis for Florida’s 6-week abortion ban

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“The progress in Florida and the progress in nearly 20 other states is part of a new beginning for life,” Pence said. “I’m going to continue to be a voice for advancing the cause of the unborn on principle and compassion.”
Pence added that he trusts Republicans to choose a different leader other than former President Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Pence has not declared a 2024 presidential bid yet but is expected to do so in the coming weeks.
“With the challenges we’re facing at home and abroad, I have a sense the American people are looking for different leadership to take us back to the conservative agenda,” Pence said. “I believe different times call for different leadership, and I trust Republican voters to bring us to victory in 2024.”
The dig comes hours before Pence and Trump are both slated to speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual leadership summit in Indianapolis Friday afternoon.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 14, 2023
DeSantis wants a 6-week abortion ban. These Republicans say no.

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“The only thing red in our district is our sun burns,” said state Sen. Alexis Calatayud, a Miami-area Republican who voted against the abortion bill last week when the full Senate approved it.
Calatayud said she voted against the measure because thousands of her constituents in the blue stronghold of Miami don’t support such a restrictive law. Despite being a Republican, she’s still beholden to the will of the voters.
Republicans hold supermajorities in the Florida Legislature, so the few GOP lawmakers who reject the measure have no power to stop or even slow its passage. But their opposition shows how abortion remains a tough issue for the party, especially after Republicans nationally underperformed in the 2022 midterms in part because the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade energized Democratic and swing voters.
That dynamic was much different in Florida, however, Republicans picked up seven new GOP members in the state House and four in the Senate. DeSantis also won the state by historic margins, even in traditionally Democratic areas like Miami.
When Florida lawmakers last year passed a 15-week ban on abortions that offers no exceptions for victims of rape and incest, only one Republican, state Rep. Rene “Coach P” Plasencia of Orlando, voted against it. He later resigned a few months before he was term-limited out of office.
House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell (D-Tampa) said the difference this year is that more Republicans are realizing the consequences of the six-week ban, which does have exceptions for victims of rape, incest and human trafficking up to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“They know and understand, like we do, that at six weeks most women don’t even know they’re pregnant,” Driskell said. “This is effectively an outright ban.”
At least 12 other states have enacted six-week bans, including neighboring Georgia. The Florida bill, once DeSantis signs it into law, will effectively end the state’s reputation as a safe haven for people seeking abortions in the South. Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe last year, at least 4,000 people have traveled to Florida to get abortions from as far away as Texas and Alabama, where abortion is prohibited at any stage of pregnancy.

In addition to its exceptions, the six-week ban includes a provision that would give $5 million to the state Department of Health for programs that promote causes such as contraception, and $15 million for programs that support mothers who give birth.
Republican state Rep. Mike Caruso of Delray Beach told POLITICO he will vote “no” Thursday on the six-week ban, while GOP Rep. Traci Koster of Tampa previously rejected the bill during a March committee vote. She did not respond to requests for comment this week.
“I don’t think the bill takes into consideration certain religious rights,” Caruso said on Wednesday. “And based on that, and some other things, I’m going to be down on the bill.”
Several faith-based groups filed legal challenges last year against the state’s 15-week abortion ban, arguing that it violates the constitutional right to freedom of speech and religion, among other things.
“I do not like this bill,” Caruso said.
The Republicans who vote against it, however, are unlikely to face any blowback from their caucus. The vast majority of the 84 House Republicans are expected to vote for the six-week ban, and Florida GOP Speaker Paul Renner told reporters on Wednesday that some Republicans in Democratic districts must still represent their constituents.
“We have members who will likely not be able to support the bill because they are a good representative of their district. And that’s not where their district is.” Renner said. “We respect those differences in our caucus.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 13, 2023
Florida lawmakers, and DeSantis, charge ahead on 6-week abortion ban

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To outsiders anticipating a DeSantis run for president, the governor’s support for the proposal may seem politically risky, especially after Tuesday’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, where the winning candidate ran on abortion rights. But it’s a direction that DeSantis — a likely Republican presidential contender — has been moving in for years, even before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
DeSantis signaled support for such a law during his first race for governor, some five years ago. It’s a stance that could earn him support from abortion opponents in key presidential primaries, answering GOP concerns that Florida’s more limited 15-week restrictions allowed the state to become an abortion sanctuary in the Southeast.
“It makes it clear that DeSantis is solidly pro-life, and he’s trying to move the ball for the protection of the unborn and he can be trusted to do that in the future,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council and a long-standing proponent of abortion restrictions.
The Florida Senate approved legislation Monday that would impose the six-week ban, and the state House is preparing to act next. When legislators do pass the proposal — which has exceptions up to 15 weeks for victims of rape, incest and human trafficking — it will be just one of many recent policy victories for DeSantis, whose Legislature has been rapidly sending him bills that achieve key conservative priorities.
The governor is sure to plug the busy Tallahassee session if and when he jumps in the 2024 race, something he may not do until at least June.
“If he decides to run, he wants to have the most robust cultural and policy conservative list of accomplishments,” said a top Republican consultant in Tallahassee, who was granted anonymity to talk freely about DeSantis. “This makes him impervious to hits from the right.”
Many critics of the bill say the measure would outlaw most abortions in the state since pregnancy often goes undetected for six weeks or more.
Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, tried to make abortion rights a centerpiece of her unsuccessful run for governor. She contends that, if adopted, the measure could trigger an enormous backlash in the Sunshine State.

“Democrats did not show up in November of 2022. This is on us,” said Fried, who was arrested this week after protesting against the legislation outside of Tallahassee City Hall. “We are going to show up and we are going to have a message — the reckoning will come.”

Nikki Fried tried to make abortion rights a centerpiece of her unsuccessful run for governor.
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Marta Lavandier/AP Photo
The six-week ban is too much for even some Florida Republicans.
When the bill passed by the Senate earlier this week, it drew “no” votes from two GOP legislators, both of whom flipped Democratic-held districts that went for President Joe Biden in 2020. Republican Sen. Rick Scott — who signed abortion restrictions into law when he was governor — said in an television interview last month that he supported existing Florida law on abortion.
“I think where most people are is reasonable restrictions,” Scott told Telemundo. “And probably most people are about 15 weeks with all the exceptions.”
Florida’s current 15-week ban was enacted just last year in anticipation of the repeal of Roe. The measure has been challenged to the Florida Supreme Court on grounds that it violates an explicit right to privacy enshrined in the state constitution — a clause that the court has used to strike down previous abortion restrictions passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature.
The court — which now consists primarily of justices appointed by DeSantis — isn’t expected to rule until later this year. The pending bill includes a clause that says the six-week ban will not take effect until 30 days after the court rules.
After the Supreme Court struck down Roe, DeSantis said he supported additional “pro-life” restrictions but he did not spell them out on the campaign trail. Late last year, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo suggested she favored a ban on abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, but by early March, she joined with Renner in backing the bill after six weeks. DeSantis then quickly endorsed it.
“There was no doubt in my mind,” Stemberger said. “He had no reason to.”
There is an “unusual political alignment” in Florida when it comes to abortion restrictions, Stemberger said.
“I think for the first time in a long time we have somewhat of a trifecta of leadership in support of the same thing,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 7, 2023
Florida Senate approves 6-week abortion ban as two Republicans vote ‘no’

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Before the vote Monday, Grall invoked comments made by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat who had said abortions should be safe, legal and rare.
“We’re so far from safe, legal and rare, we have normalized and sterilized the taking of life as health care,” Grall said. “We’ve heard women will continue to have abortions, but that’s like saying people will continue murdering people.”
The House is expected to take up the issue next week. Republicans hold a supermajority in the Legislature, and the bill is expected to have no difficulties reaching DeSantis, who also supports it.
The debate on the bill was halted for 10 minutes by protesters in the public-viewing gallery who screamed comments such as “People will die” and “Abortion is health care.” State Sen. Ileana Garcia (R-Miami) began pointing at protesters and said, “You shut up,” before Senate President Kathleen Passidomo ordered security to clear the public-viewing gallery.
After the session resumed, state Sen. Alexis Calatayud (R-Miami) said she was voting against the 6-week ban on behalf of her constituents, but she still supported several other parts of the bill.
“I’m not supporting this bill today, but I believe it will pass and it will become the law in this state,” said Calatayud, who also voted against the bill in two committee hearings. “And I believe it will go a long way to help change the hearts and minds influenced by a decade of anti-life culture.”
The second opposing Republican vote was from state Sen. Cory Simon (R-Tallahassee), who offered no comment during the debate. Simon also did not vote on the bill during its final Senate committee meeting last week. Simon’s district includes Leon County, which is a stronghold for Democrats.
Democrats argued that the bill supported Christian principles over health care for women, and that the government should not interfere in decisions that a patient makes with a doctor. State Sen. Tracie Davis (D-Jacksonville) said the measure was written to make women feel ashamed of making health-care decisions.

“I won’t let anyone make me feel ashamed and not have to acknowledge it,” Davis said. “No woman should be ashamed to have an abortion.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 4, 2023